On 20 October, the fifth meeting of the Ministers of Tourism of Mongolia, Russia and China was held online. The meeting was organized at the initiation of the Federal Agency for Tourism of Russia, focusing on revitalization of the tourism industry, which has suffered badly from the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the ministers looked at the establishment of joint tourist itineraries and theexpansion of cooperation within the sector.

The representatives of the sector headed by Minister of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia D.Sarangerel, Head of the Federal Agency for Tourism of Russia Z.V.Doguzova and Vice Minister of Culture and Tourism of China Zhang Xu participated in the meeting.

Mongolia, for the first time, identified tourism as its leading sector of the economy. Although the sector has stagnated and suffered significant losses due to the pandemic, we have taken advantage of this opportunity to improve our tourism infrastructure, quality of services and capacity building.

Last year, 141,927 Russian tourists visited Mongolia which shows an increase of 9.9 percent compared with the same period of the previous year.

D.Sarangerel, Minister of Environment and Tourism  has initiated to set up a joint working group to develop a plan to maintain the growth in the number of tourists traveling between the three countries after the risk level of the pandemic drops to minimal; to develop and implement a joint plan to intensify mutual training of specialists, promotion and other marketing activities in the three countries, etc.