Rural tourism rapidly developing in Belarus

The director of the tourism department of the Ministry of Sport and Tourism Victar Yankavenka has informed about it. According to him, rural tourism is “the kind of tourism developing quicker than any other”. There were 484 manours in Belarus on January 1. The number has increased by 15 times in comparison with 2007. Manours welcomed 39 thousand people from 40 countries last year. At the same time, V.Yakavenka thinks that rural tourism in Belarus “is still in the formation stage”. The average time a tourist spends in a manour is two or three days. As a rule, people prefer spending family week-ends and organizing corporative holidays in manours.

Taking the increasing number of manours into account, V.Yankavenka is worried that agricultural tourism “may lose its quality”. Manours should correspond to service standards and the services should be versatile.

It is not clear if the standards have been worked out or not.

BelaPAN