BAKHCHYSARAY TIC: REVIVING THE GLORY
Enchanting region! eyes’ delight!
Alexander Pushkin, “The Bakhchysaray Fountain”
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On June 10, 2011, a Tourist Information Center (TIC), established with assistance from USAID LINC and the Czech Republic, was inaugurated in Bakhchysaray, Crimea, giving rise to hopes of having more guests and more jobs.
The inauguration was organized by USAID LINC in conjunction with the ArtpPole-Krym Events Agency and the Bakhchysaray Regional Development Agency with support from the Bakhchysaray Raion Rada, Raion State Administration and City Rada. Besides the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the activities, attended by numerous officials, media people, and tourism practitioners, included presentations of a medieval Bakhchysaray model, tourist routes, and cultural events in the region, VIP-marking of a route, and a folk music concert in the Zıncırlı madrasah.
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Elmira Ablyalimova, Bakhchysaray Regional Development Agency Director: “This event would not have happened today but for partnership with our friends who have helped us to open the center – the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ukraine and the Czech government as well as the USAID Local Investment and National Competitiveness project” |
Bakhchysaray Regional Development Agency Director Elmira Ablyalimova, who facilitated the ceremony, said the TIC opening would have been impossible without the “partnership with our friends – the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ukraine and the Czech government as well as the USAID Local Investment and National Competitiveness project.”
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Jeffrey Luebbe, USAID LINC Crimean Field Director: “TIC is not just premises, not just four walls. TIC is people who represent interests of both local residents and tourists for their mutual benefit, better understanding, and greater respect of each other” |
USAID LINC Crimean Field Director Jeffrey Luebbe said that the project and the Regional Development Agency had signed a Protocol of Collaboration to promote the TIC and thus facilitate tourism development in the raion. USAID LINC supports the TIC with equipment and staff training, and will provide multilingual information for tourists. The Bakhchysaray TIC, on its part, undertakes to share its experience with other Crimean tourist information centers, Mr. Luebbe said.
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Jiři Schneider, First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic: “As a tourism amateur, I’m very happy that here we are opening a project that is close to people, that supports tourism. There are many people who like walking mountains by marks, and I’m very happy that right here and now we are initiating the tradition of marking tourist routes” |
First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic Jiři Schneider, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People Mustafa Cemilev, Crimea First Deputy Resorts and Tourism Minister Oleksandr Liyev, Crimea Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Olha Kryvenko, and Bakhchysaray Raion State Administration Head Ilmi Umerov also addressed the audience before cutting the ribbon. The speakers pointed out that the TIC would boost the inflow of tourists to the raion, encouraging job creation and general economic development.
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The Bakhchysaray TIC is located in the central part of the former capital of the Crimean Khanate – just opposite the Khan’s Palace, the world’s only Crimean-Tatar palace architecture monument. Expectations of the TIC entertained in Bakhchysaray is that it will become a vehicle to revive the region’s tourist destination glory.
According to Ms. Ablyalimova, about 650,000 visitors are registered to come to Bakhchysaray annually, a good deal of whom being foreigners from countries to the west of Ukraine. It is generally believed that the TIC will help increase significantly this number by not only offering better services to tourists but also offering them to “discover” other attractions the raion is rich in, not only the famous palace poetized by Pushkin.
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Mustafa Cemilev, Chairman of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People: “We hope very much that this center will help develop the ethnic culture of Crimea’s native people – Crimean Tatars – and familiarize other peoples with it, thus establishing friendly relations among all ethnoses living on our blessed land” |
Says Esma Abdullayeva, coordinator of the TIC creation project: “The TIC opening is very important because Bakhchysaray has not been developing for many years in terms of tourism, whereas it has a huge potential. That is, the Bakhchysaray mountains and historic monuments are very competitive, but the whole world knows only the Khan’s Palace.”
Creation of a tourist information center in the Bakhchysaray Raion was one of objectives of the economic development strategy – the Economic Block drafted under the guidance of USAID LINC as part of the Bakhchysaray Raion and City Sustainable Development Strategy in 2009. The Economic Block addresses three critical development directions, including creation of conditions for investment attraction, improvement in the quality of raion development management, and hard infrastructure development, and two priority sectors: tourism and agriculture/processing.
The strategy’s TIC creation objective was materialized through a project implemented by the Bakhchysaray Regional Development Agency sponsored by the Czech Republic and USAID LINC.
USAID LINC considers tourism one of Crimea’s key industries, providing assistance in its development. This assistance includes support of the TIC creation and/or operation improvement through workshops, study tours, and equipment and material provision. Earlier, USAID LINC helped open a TIC in the Crimean citiy of Yevpatoria.
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Oleksandr Liyev, First Deputy Resorts and Tourism Minister of Crimea: “For a breakthrough in tourism… we need that every Crimean would assume a responsibility, and understand his or her role, mission in the hospitality, which no money can buy. Many thanks to the Czech government. Huge thanks to the USAID LINC project. We’ve been working with this project a lot, we’ve done quite a lot, and we’ll do a lot more” |
Olha Kryvenko, Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister of Crimea: “I congratulate all the Bakhchysarayans, I congratulate all the vacationers who will visit Bakhchysaray and the Bakhcysaray Raion and use services of this great Tourist Information Center” |
Ilmi Umerov, Bakhchysaray Raion State Administration Head, Crimea: “Bakhchysaray needs to restore his face. The Bakhchysaray region was wrongly estranged from tourism. Tourism in Bakhchysaray hasn’t been developing for decades, despite the existence of a huge potential here. And this potential is to be unveiled with a help from the Tourist Information Center” |
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Esma Abdullayeva is the coordinator of the TIC project, which includes not only the TIC establishment per se but also the tourist routes development and marking. “We’ll have a lot of useful and free information in the TIC. We’ll have a multilingual site, which is being developed already. On the site, there will be everything on the city’s and raion’s tourist resources. We’ll have information kiosks and a great number of booklets, which you have already seen in the TIC. That is, there’ll be a lot of useful information for tourists: where to go, where to relax, what to see. It’s a huge volume of information, absent in the Bakhchysaray Raion until today. All that will certainly help increase the inflow of tourists, simultaneously improving the quality of services provided to them. New jobs will be created” |
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Ayshe Umerova has been working as a Bakhchysaray TIC manager for about a week – perhaps, one of the first jobs created in the city due to the center establishment. “I was born in Bakhchysaray. Acquainted well with all the people who implemented the TIC project. Have recently graduated from the Tavrian National University majored in tourism. I knew that the center would open here; was preparing myself to that, studying information; and as soon as I passed exams, I joined the project. I like it here. The more we have centers like this, the more jobs there will be for the youth,” says Ayshe |
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Tymur Bekirov (left), a graduate from the Tavria National University History Department with a three-year experience in archeology, is the author of the medieval Bakhchysaray model. The model, based on the author’s research, took him three years from idea to completion. However, Mr. Bekirov says the model would have never materialized without assistance from Naryman Suleymanov (right) – the owner of the “Model-Museum” café that roofs the model. A sort of science commercialization, one could say |
