Irkutsk reached the final of the All Russian tourism award Route of the Year with three projects, including the Green Line and the citys Information and Tourism Service. The article explains how Irkutsk initiatives compete with projects from different regions and why tourism centers are becoming an important tool for making cities more attractive. It also notes growing interest in the service, with inquiries rising from two thousand to seven thousand a year in a year and a half.

Irkutsk presented three projects of its tourism infrastructure in the final of the All-Russian tourism award “Route of the Year,” which took place the day before in the city of Voronezh. This year, the industry award was established by the “Region PR Public Relations Development Fund” and the “Foundation for Promoting the Development of Territorial Branding” (Vladivostok); it is awarded based on the results of an open all-Russian competition of projects for achievements in the creation and development of tourist routes.
The first competition featured 263 projects from 63 regions of Russia, from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad. The award organizers note the large number of tourism projects located in the Arctic climate zone, in Siberia, and in the Far East. The project nominations make it possible to showcase the work of tourist information centers and the best tourist routes (military-historical, water, automobile, gastronomic, weekend, adventure, cultural and educational).
Participants in the award can present both urban routes and tourist routes that combine several cities and even several regions of Russia. In addition, competition participants could submit a mobile application for tourists, a virtual tourist route, a guidebook (printed edition), a thematic route (dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War), and an excursion route in the city. 130 projects reached the final, including Irkutsk’s “Green Line” and the “Information and Tourist Service of the City of Irkutsk.” In the final of the competition, the “Information and Tourist Service of Irkutsk” competed with similar projects created in Buryatia, Dagestan, Vyborg, Kaluga, Orenburg, Kirovsk, Pskov, Yekaterinburg, Kurgan, Pereslavl-Zalessky, Veliky Novgorod, St. Petersburg, and Nizhny Novgorod. The award organizers note that such centers are more often created in small towns and are engaged in work to build tourist appeal. In Irkutsk, over 1.5 years of operation of the information and tourist service, the number of inquiries increased from two thousand to seven thousand people per year. It is usually unorganized travelers with backpacks who come here, receiving all the necessary information about the city and their opportunities as tourists.
Based on materials from the press service of the administration of the city of Irkutsk.