UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 13, 2010. ‘Yekaterinburg currently needs more visitors to come here. Our hotels should be at least 68% full and not only 50% full, as is the case at the moment, in order for the city’s conference halls to be used to the fullest. For all of this to become a reality, Yekaterinburg needs a re-branding campaign,’ Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev said at a recent meeting dedicated to commercial estate.
‘We need to create an awareness of Yekaterinburg as the best and the ‘one and only’ place in Monaco, Montreal, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. We must create the environment in which the international airlines will bring 7 million passengers to our Koltsovo Airport rather than the current 2.5 million. We must make Koltsovo Hub meet the existing hub standards. We must make sure that our two hundred cafes and restaurants provide menus in English and English-speaking staff and that each three-star hotel employs Chinese-speaking personnel into the bargain. We would like every taxi driver who meets an Italian or a Spanish citizen at the airport to speak English. All this is what the re-branding of Yekaterinburg is about,’ Konteev explained.