SWOT - ANALYSIS
OF THE MUSEUM TOURISM SPHERE IN THE REPUBLIC OF KARELIA
STRENGHS
 Museums own premises. Municipal
payments and basic salaries are
covered from the budget.
 Museums have a standard set of
computer equipment and an Internet
connection
 Museums have developed tourist
routes and experience of guiding
tours
 Museums have perspective themes for
the museum tourism development and
unique information resources (funds,
collections)
 Museums (as a rule) have experience
in fundraising techniques for
attracting extra-budgetary funds and
projects connected with museum
tourism
 Museums have the right to change
their Statutes and Provisions
introducing necessary paragraphs on
connected with providing tourist
services
 Museums have the right to establish
tourist departments, visitors’ centers,
souvenir stores, etc.
WEAKNESSES
 Weak material and technical base
 Insufficient intermuseum
coordination
 Insufficient coordination between
museums and other cultural
institutions preventing the creation of
complex tourist products
 Insufficiently skilled personnel
 Statutes and Provisions (as a rule)
lack paragraphs according to which
museums can run tourist activity
independently
 There are no tourist departments in
museums
 Museums (as a rule) do not have their
own bank accounts (mutual
settlements are carried out trough
unified accounts departments of the
municipality)
 As a whole a low quality of museum
products
 Circulation of financial documents is
badly organized in museums
 Development concepts of museums
are at the initial stage which leads to
the weak subject positioning of
museums in the market of tourism
and cultural entrepreneurship
 Museums (as a rule) lack their own
Internet resources
 Lack of the single coordinating center
of the museum tourism in the region
OPPORTUNITIES
 The region has a considerable number
of sights of the high tourist level
located in rural area
 Increase of the individual tourist flow
 Increase of the entry tourism ratio
 Increase of investors’ interest in
tourism
 Growth of different kinds of cognitive
tourism (cultural, festival,
ethnographic, eco, specialized)
 Strengthening of the international
THREATS
 Low image of Russia as a whole
(safety, infrastructure, etc.) slows
down the growth rate of entry
tourism, particularly of individual
tourism.
 Weak tourist infrastructure (hotels,
roads, hygiene, etc.)
 Constant increase of quality standards
of tourist services
 Growing tourist market competition
 Growing contradictions of the
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partner contacts
In the frameworks of the reforms the
State gives great independence to
museums and encourages
entrepreneurship
In the frameworks of the
administrative reform the State
simplifies official procedures which
prevent from the development of
small entrepreneurship, including the
sphere of tourism and cultural
entrepreneurship
There are possibilities to improve
skills of museum workers through
different grant programs
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museum’s tourist activity with its
main activity in terms of general lack
of development of museum structures
Financial dependence of museums
Poor budgetary funding of museums
forces them to allocate profit from
tourist activity to other matters
(repairs, etc.) at the expense of further
development of this sphere
Traditional conservatism of museum
workers results in slow transition
from the “museum organization” to
the “museum firm”
Tourism (as a rule) is not in the main
priority in the frames of development
programs of municipal institutions of
Karelia
Optimization of the budget sector of
Russia leads to the inevitable
reduction of structure and staff in
cultural institutions, and particularly
in museums
There are no standards for the cultural
institutions of a new type
A great number of local brands lack
promotion against the constantly
increasing promotion of the mega
brands of Karelia – Kizhi, Valaam
and Solovki
Many historical and cultural
monuments which are of great
interest as sights are disappearing
Ecology is deteriorating
Low solvency of Russian tourists
entails the tendency of reducing
prices of tourist products by travel
agencies at the expense of museum
visiting