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The methodological support and training acceleration program for participants of the Nationwide competition for creation of tourist and recreational clusters (TRCs) and ecotourism development in Russia is complete: 3 modules, 36 TRC projects, 7 mentors, around 1000 participants, more than 80 lectures, strategic sessions and events, and more than 200 hours of video recordings. The program demonstrated its demand in the regions and became a good example of how it is possible and necessary to work systematically with protected areas and adjacent areas. And we can already talk about the first results of the accelerator: the projects received support from regional authorities, were presented to representatives of federal ministries and agencies and development institutions, as well as investors who took part of the projects to work out for further interaction, and some of the finalists of the competition received grants from Rostourism.

The Acceleration Program was launched in June, immediately after the announcement of the start of applications for the All-Russian Ecotourism Development Competition, and consisted of a preparatory stage and three modules. Developing the Accelerator, the organizer of the competition – the Agency for Strategic Initiatives – set its goal to create a practically oriented industry training program aimed at the result, in which its participants by the end of the project are able to form a unique product for tourism industry in Russia, ready for implementation: an economically viable master plan for the tourism and recreational cluster in protected areas and adjacent areas. The task of the program is to increase the level of knowledge and develop new professional competences of the finalist teams.

For effective work on the crowdsourcing platform of the https://priroda.life project, a section was created consisting of an open and closed part (accessible only to finalists). It contains all information on all modules of the training program, including lectures, speakers’ presentations and other materials necessary for the teams to study. The project has shown its high demand: the total number of users registered on the platform has almost reached 400,000 people.

For several months, the finalist teams – about 1000 people – worked on projects in Modules 1 and 2: they consulted with relevant experts, talked to personal mentors and shared experiences with each other, practiced presentation and oratory skills. Each team had a mentor attached to them to help prioritize and make the team’s work more effective. In the course of the training, participants learned how to launch processes that enable investment and local economic development, preserve and capitalize local cultural heritage, and improve the quality of a tourism product. They also worked to innovate changes for the better in the real world, and considered various options for attracting financing, from private and borrowed investment to government support and development institution programs.

The project also included an open online lecture program for all those who are concerned with ecotourism and conservation of natural areas. 8 weekly open talks during August and September, at which more than 40 representatives of state, business and institutions of protected areas, as well as leading experts in the tourism industry, economists, architects, marketers, and programmers shared their experience and knowledge, discussed the points of growth of domestic tourism in the regions, effective mechanisms of ecotourism development and factors of investment attractiveness of territories on the example of existing protected areas. The popularity and demand for the lectures can hardly be overestimated: the video recordings have already had almost 10,000 views (they are collected in a single playlist on the project's official website https://priroda.life/.

The Accelerator concluded with the 3rd module, which was devoted directly to the formation of a master plan and strategy for the development of the territory, and three important events for the participants: GR-pitching and investment pitching – face-to-face defense of their projects in front of experts, representatives of institutional partners of the competition – the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of the Russian Federation for the Development of the Far East and Arctic, the Federal Agency for Tourism (Rostourism), as well as the Ministry of Transport of Russia, the Ministry of Construction and Housing and Communal Services of Russia and the Ministry of Agriculture of the Russian Federation – and representatives of business communities, development institutions and potential investors.

The task of the winning teams was not just to give a brief description of their projects, but to justify their preliminary economic model and form their request to the existing government programs, corresponding to the objectives of the projects, and potential investors. More than 40% of 100 investors presenting at the pitching noted that they are ready to invest from 15 to 100 million rubles in projects, about 35% would invest up to 15 million rubles, and almost a quarter are ready to finance projects with more than 100 million rubles. More than a half of them primarily consider the European part of Russia for investments, and about 30% are prepared to invest in the Urals and Siberia. During the event, potential investors noted that for them the most important parameters when deciding to enter a project are: the payback period, the availability of infrastructure and existing tourist flows, the ability to start with small investments to confirm the reliability of the project, and transparency of the system of interaction of all participants in the process.

Competition and Acceleration Organizer – Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

Competition operator and Acceleration program developer – Agency CENTER.