Zavidovo Resort to Boost Year-round Wellness, Sports and Event Tourism with Financial Support from VEB.RF
One of the resort’s key facilities is a unique indoor family centre for year-round sports and water activities
The project aims to make the Tver Region more attractive and increase tourist traffic
The project is part of the Tourism and Hospitality Industry national project
VEB.RF has begun to provide funding for the project to promote year-round tourism and recreation at the Zavidovo resort in the Tver Region.
The loan agreements totalling about 29 billion roubles and aimed at financing the project were signed by VEB.RF and Zavidovo Park LLC in late December 2021. InfraVEB (part of the VEB.RF Group) was responsible for financial advice and financing for project documentation.
The project contributes to work on promoting year-round tourism and recreation at the Zavidovo resort, which has already become popular among guests from Moscow. The resort will receive 1,130 hotel rooms, an indoor family centre for sports and water activities, a playpark and a ski slope. It is intended that the resort will be provided with a wide range of guest attraction capabilities. Coupled with the woods of Zavidovo National Park and vast expanses of water, this will make it a unique tourist destination in central Russia.
The project is part of Volga Sea, an integrated regional project to promote the tourism industry in the Tver Region, which is also carried out under the Tourism and Hospitality Industry national project. The new Zavidovo facilities are designed to attract middle-income people and include three- and four-star hotels.
Some of Zavidovo’s infrastructure facilities are to be built with support from the regional government, such as a passenger hub, river port infrastructure and support facilities. In addition, Zavidovo Park LLC is provided with tax incentives as a resident of the Zavidovo special economic zone.
Igor Rudenya, Governor of the Tver Region:
“Zavidovo is one of our major projects. The new infrastructure will make it possible to deliver higher quality for recreation at the resort and provide support for small and medium-sized businesses.”
Zarina Doguzova, Head of the Federal Agency for Tourism of the Russian Federation:
“The project is to use concessional loans under the Agency’s programme to support hotel construction and refurbishment. We find it very important that the first 38 projects approved under the programme include not only seaside beach hotels, but also hotels in natural areas in the countryside. Beautiful nature, good local cuisine, and an escape from the hustle of city life attract tourists to Zavidovo all year round. It’s a good thing that our concessional lending programme will help to create more local hotels with high standards of service, safety and comfort.”
Nikolay Tsekhomsky, First Deputy Chairman and member of the Management Board, VEB.RF:
“At VEB.RF, tourist infrastructure projects are primarily seen as contributing towards national development goals. The Zavidovo project will help to achieve a bundle of economic and social outcomes. The Tver Region will receive new jobs and taxes, and resort guests will be provided with great opportunities for outdoor family activities, recreation, ecotourism and sport.”
“Promoting domestic tourism and creating new tourist attractions are in the best interests of the government in general and the region in particular. Becoming increasingly successful since 2008, the Zavidovo resort in the Tver Region now receives 200,000–250,000 tourists every year,” said Sergey Bachin, CEO, Vasta Discovery (Zavidovo resort project manager). “Our goal is to increase their number to 1 million guests. I’m sure that, with support from VEB.RF, the resort will be completely built in three or four years, and we’ll reach this goal together.”
VEB.RF’s Urban Laboratories office at 10 Vozdvizhenka Street hosted a demonstration of Russia’s City Life Index and a presentation about the citylifeindex.ru platform.
The event was attended by residents of Salekhard, Krasnodar and Nizhni Novgorod, along with Vladimir Mau, Rector, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA); Andrey Samokhin, Chief Managing Director and Head of VEB.RF Group Analytics and Marketing; Svetlana Chupsheva, General Director, Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI); and Igor Shuvalov, Chairman, VEB.RF.
The City Life Index is a publicly available analytics platform based on global best practices. This is the first project to provide comprehensive assessment for a variety of different factors in urban life, from infrastructure availability to transport accessibility to private spaces to public confidence. The findings of studies on quality of life are posted at citylifeindex.ru/research.
The City Life Index was developed by VEB.RF in cooperation with PwC, RANEPA and ASI. The analytics system makes it possible to deal with issues of city development and due diligence for potential investment projects. The index uses a database of more than 200 indicators, and 115 Russian cities are benchmarked against international comparators. The database is updated every year.
Vladimir Mau, Rector, RANEPA:
“Quality of life takes precedence over economic growth. Economic growth is good only when accompanied by improved quality of life and structural modernisation. … The Russian Government is advocating a customer- or human-centric approach. This is a very important shift in policy and philosophies. Customer centricity is the dialogue of federal and local authorities with people. Indeed, the key repository of interests is individuals and their families. It is, however, important to keep different aspects in balance: efforts to meet present-day needs should be accompanied by foresight and constant innovation.”
Andrey Samokhin, Chief Managing Director and Head of VEB.RF Group Analytics and Marketing:
“VEB.RF is primarily mandated to help to launch investment projects that have a large-scale effect on the economy and quality of life. And our work is focused on urban areas because city dwellers make up 75% of Russia’s population, or 110 million people. Developing urban economies is key to improved quality of life for three-fourths of the country’s population. To find out where investment will achieve the best social outcomes, we launched the City Life Index project. This is an analytics platform that helps with investment decision-making based on social outcomes. It shows the advantages and development zones of cities, helps to identify best practices for city development and extend them to other cities.”
Svetlana Chupsheva, General Director, ASI:
“ASI has the regional Quality of Life Ranking, and VEB.RF is presenting the City Life Index today. This provides every governor with a powerful tool to improve quality of life in Russian regions. What are the determining factors in quality of life? They correspond to the 12 aspects selected by VEB.RF. These are matters of vital importance to everyone; they are factored in when people decide whether or not they and their families will live in a city or region. And our common goal is to use the results of the ranking and index to find and promote across the country the best solutions, whose effects will be noticed by everyone.”
Igor Shuvalov, Chairman, VEB.RF:
“The City Life Index is a tool related to everybody: city dwellers, city governments, businesses. The index will be increasingly sophisticated and intelligent to provide a more insightful analysis of a family’s city life, such as climatic and educational factors. We’ll use these data to take business decisions. The index will help us to make the best investment decisions with maximal effect. Our responsibility is to learn how to finance and support projects cleverly in order to convert public goods into quality of life as in EU and OECD cities. Russia has a lot of opportunities. We want to learn to see them and make effective use of them.”
Elizaveta Filippova, Partner, PwC Russia:
“Cities compete for talent. For the first time, the knowledge economy and flexible forms of employment made it possible to differentiate between the notions of a city for working and a city for dwelling. Dwellers can constantly choose and change where to live. The index is also designed to help people to make an informed choice, enabling them to compare quality of life not only in Russian cities but also abroad.”