What happens to a travel destination when it becomes embroiled in political protest and armed conflict? Like Cyprus and Egypt before it, Crimea is about to find out.
Crimea's cities and coastal regions boast beautiful resorts, centuries-old castles and black sand beaches. The peninsula has been considered a vacation destination since the late 1800s.
The annual high season for tourism to the Crimean peninsula begins in about a month, but flights in and out of the capital city Simferopol to anywhere but Moscow have ground to a halt. Travelers are canceling reservations as quickly as they can, and the outlook is grim.
According to booking website ostrovok.ru, demand for Crimean hotels in 2014 is just a sixth of what it was in 2013. Frankly, it's a bit surprising there's any demand at all.
See also: Mapmakers Debate How to Define Crimea
Elvira Kizilova, hospitality and tourism expert at the Crimean Tourism Diversification and Support Project, said Crimea attracts about six million visitors each year, which provides enough of an industry to employ one in four Crimeans. If you include the related services industries, like food and transportation, a decline in tourism could be a disaster for more than half of Crimea's economy. According to Kizilova, Crimea is popular with average-income families in Ukraine and Russia, which together supply 91% of annual tourists.
While Russian news organization RT said the annexation of Crimea will greatly increase the number of Russian tourists, Kizilova disagrees.
"Average people came to Crimea," she said. "Probably people will be afraid."
Nearby South Ossetia, which was annexed by Russia in 2008, may offer a cautionary tale. At first the country was optimistic: “Officials daydreamed about building an economy based on tourism, like that of Monaco or Andorra,” Olesya Vartanyan and Ellen Barry wrote in the New York Times.
Dina Alborova, the head of a nonprofit organization in South Ossetia, told the New York Times her optimism gradually died.
“During the first winter, we still thought, ‘The war just ended,’” Alborova told the paper. “By the second winter, frustration had taken root. When the third winter came, everything was clear.”
Six years later, South Ossetia’s economy is dependent on funding from Russia. Unemployment and prices are high, and the independent state has only been recognized by Russia, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Nauru and Tuvalu. The dream of becoming a tourism hot spot has failed to materialize.
Even if the military conflict in Crimea is quickly resolved, there are other issues to consider. Transportation to the peninsula will remain difficult, and a proposed bridge between Crimea and Russia is estimated to take at least three years to complete. Prices in Crimea have already seen a 40% increase, as businesses try to make up for lost revenue.
“I regret the possible decline of Crimean tourism,” said Kizilova, who has spent years working in the travel industry to promote Crimea. "We've tried to do well."

Image: Flickr, dr_tr

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