October 8, 2014. Head of Yekaterinburg Council Alexander Yakob and French Ambassador to Russia Jean-Maurice Ripert met to talk about creation of tourist routes in the Urals.

‘Together with the representatives of some French companies, we talked about the usual things relating to the development of joint ventures in the Urals. For one, the French party made an interesting proposal on the creation of tourist routes,’ Yakob said.

According to the head of the city council, this proposal stands not only for Yekaterinburg but for the Urals on the whole. One way or another, though, every tourist route will still go through Yekaterinburg. For example, one of the French companies has plenty of experience in setting up the infrastructure for the tourist routes, and this experience could prove very useful for the Urals’ project.

‘France knows Yekaterinburg quite well: there are some large French businesses that have been operating here for a while: Auchan, Danone, Decathlon. Yekaterinburg is a city whose future we are confident about, this is a dynamic, fast-growing place. The Urals’ capital is uniquely situated at the heart of Russia, which fact can become a very important one in making the city a crossing point between Europe and Asia. Its water resources are just one of the directions. The tourist industry has a great future here, and it is currently not as developed as it could be,’ the French Ambassador pointed out.

It’s worth noting that France was the world’s No.1 tourist country last year: nearly 85m people traveled to the country whose population stands at 65.6m people.