Pacific International Congress Opens in Vladivostok

On 23 September, the Pacific International Congress, an associated event of the International Tourism Forum ‘Let’s Travel!’, opened at the Russia National Centre in Primorye Territory. The first day featured the session “Find and Train: Tools for Workforce Resilience in Far Eastern Tourism”, where experts discussed new approaches to training specialists for the industry. The discussion brought together two broad perspectives on the workforce challenge: a capital-city methodology of continuous education, and a programme for transforming closed industrial towns into attractive tourist destinations.

Anastasia Berezneva, Head of Youth Projects for Workforce Development in the Tourism Industry at Mostourism, presented a methodology for continuous workforce support in the sector, developed within the Moscow School of Hospitality ecosystem, and proposed scaling the experience to Primorye Territory and other Russian regions. In her assessment, the pace at which the labour market is being transformed means that the classic approach, under which a university education sufficed for an entire working life, has stopped working. The industry needs to shift to a model of lifelong learning.

“Tourism is the industry that is always first to respond to change. That led us to the conclusion that in tourism it is not enough to acquire a body of knowledge once and work with it for the rest of your life. What is needed here is a system of lifelong learning,” the speaker stressed.

She pointed out that traveller satisfaction is determined directly by the human factor: over the course of a single trip, a guest comes into contact with people from more than 40 different occupations, which means staff need hard professional skills alongside well-developed soft skills. Many people, she added, have no idea of the less obvious career paths that exist in tourism, particularly where the industry intersects with other fields.

The Moscow School of Hospitality ecosystem, launched in the capital, covers every basic stage of working with specialists: recruitment, onboarding, motivation, professional development, as well as subsequent employment. Several strands of the project already operate nationwide and are open to residents of the Far East. The Your Start in Tourism youth intensive is aimed at participants aged 18 to 35 from across the country, helping them get their bearings in the industry quickly while making direct contact with employers. The Welcome to Tourism online courses run year-round, training front-line hotel staff and tour guides.

A parallel approach to the workforce challenge was presented by Vita Saar, Head of Rosatom’s Hospitable Cities programme and Chair of the Sustainable Tourism Development Committee at the Russian Union of Travel Industry. The Rosatom State Corporation is preparing a large-scale programme to develop tourism and improve quality of life in the closed and single-industry towns where it operates, with plans to almost double its headcount by 2035. The programme covers Far Eastern and Arctic towns such as Pevek, Bilibino, Krasnokamensk, Polyarnye Zori, Revda, and Ussuriysk. To attract staff, Rosatom has launched a comprehensive initiative: the ‘I am Relocating’ project, a system of seamless relocation for specialists; Tours of Opportunity, trips for students that include interviews on the spot; as well as a retraining programme for local residents that brings in industry retirees, plant employees, and municipal teams to work as guides.

“The corporation’s research also showed that 63% of residents of nuclear towns travel to neighbouring settlements for leisure and dining, taking their earnings out of the area. Salaries in nuclear towns, meanwhile, are on average 20–30% higher than the regional level,” Vita Saar noted.

To keep that money inside the towns, Rosatom has launched the Atoms of Taste competition and is awarding grants for local catering, infrastructure, and festival projects.

“The hospitality development programme is intended to turn nuclear towns from closed production hubs into attractive destinations with a high-quality environment for living and leisure,” the expert stressed.

The Pacific International Congress is being held for the first time in 2026, bringing together two formats long established in Primorye Territory: the Pacific Tourism Forum and the Far Eastern Export Forum. The Congress is organized by the Government of Primorye Territory, with support from the Ministry for the Development of the Russian Far East and the Arctic and the Roscongress Foundation. The Congress is an associated event of the International Tourism Forum ‘Let’s Travel!’. Its operator is the Primorye Territory Tourist Information Centre.