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"The potential in Russia is rabid": an interview with the co-founder of the gastropub "We've Moved Away"

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"The potential in Russia is rabid": an interview with the co-founder of the gastropub "We've Moved Away"

While the borders of many destinations are closed for travel, Russians have begun to actively explore their country, which they could previously travel through only by exception. But does the Russian tourist industry meet the needs of even the most capricious traveller? Can travel in Russia impress those for whom travel is not about a lazy holiday, but a source of impressions, emotions, acquaintances and new discoveries?

The editors of Made in Russia talked to Ekaterina Klenova-Bychkova, co-founder of the project for organizing individual gastronomic travels in Russia and beyond - "Departed". How to change stereotypes about recreation in Russia? How can tourism help local small businesses tell their own story? How to launch and develop projects that resonate? Read about all this in this interview.

Tell us, please, how did you get the idea of launching your own business in travel?

The pandemic hit me very hard as a person who traveled a lot while the world was normal. On New Year's Day, my husband and I always went somewhere, but not across Russia, and in 2020 I had to plan a trip around the Golden Ring. I made it non-trivial: we lived in a monastery, crossed the frozen Volga and were in the most beautiful village in Russia (yes, such exists, google it - Vyatskoye). And people started actively responding to my stories (on Instagram - ed.), asking how I did it, where I found the place. I've thought many times that I would like to do traveling but I was afraid to start and on this wave of inspiration in a trip I impulsively wrote in my stories that I want to do traveling not only for myself.

The only person who responded to me in the stories was Galya, my partner at Departures, she and I didn't know each other personally at the time, but we followed each other on Instagram and she said she'd been thinking about something like that herself for a while now. A week later we met to discuss our vision, we agreed that we would try to do Sochi first - we understood that in 2021 the world will not be the same, and this is a chance to make a great trip to Russia, to try. We discussed the idea and flew to Sochi in two weeks, to put together a programme and check out the interesting places we wanted to visit ourselves.

How long was the project?

It has been exactly two months since we launched. We started with the first tour in March, and preparations have been underway since the end of January.

How do you work out the tours so that people are interested and go with you?

When we imagined our potential audience, we realised that it is impossible to predict what abstract people will like. Therefore, we always started from the premise that we prepare tours for ourselves and for people who are close to us in spirit. We always search for such places which will interest us and from which we will be in a pleasant shock.

Another big request is to introduce guests to entrepreneurs who are doing cool projects. When we were preparing a trip to Sochi, the first thing we did was to make a list of interesting places and go to meet the founders. So we ended up at the House of Jam, a very tasty place with a cool concept, got to know the owner, proposed cooperation and started holding cooking master classes there, which no-one had done before us.

By the way, agrotourism is now gaining momentum in Russia, where city dwellers are being introduced to rural specialities and treated to farm produce. Are you planning other trips across Russia and cooperation with other "small businesses"?

When the pandemic hit, everyone suddenly realised that there are a lot of cool places in Russia. But basically everyone goes to the same places - Kamchatka, Murmansk Oblast, Karelia and maybe Altai. We don't really want to go there, where there are already many people, we want to look at less popular routes.

In the near future we're going to Rostov-on-Don, it's my small motherland, and I can see how in the last few years Rostov is developing, but not many people still go there. Because supposedly there's nothing to do there? Although there are a lot of artists and gastronomic projects there. On our trip to Rostov we want to make a collaboration with a project that organizes dinners made of local products where you can meet new people. Rostov is very hospitable people who love to eat good food. And we do travel for those who like to eat well and live beautifully - that's our slogan.

We try to reach out to small farming outlets, cafes, public spaces and restaurants with unusual concepts. Often it is still difficult to find such places in Russia, either because they are small or for some other reason, but friends and the power of social media help us.

For future gastro-travels, we are considering the Astrakhan region and Krasnodar.

How mutually beneficial are such collaborations with small business projects?

They are interested in doing it, that's a fact. Because it is also something new for them. We often offer to do a master class or a tasting. As for the terms, this is a purely monetary relationship: we come to them with a proposal for cooperation, we negotiate the terms. Most often it is a certain amount that we have to pay them for the master class, and if we all like it, we can tell about them on Instagram, and they - about us. We also printed postcards with our branding and illustrations, took them to several Sochi places we've already collaborated with, and now they're posting them at their place. That is, they advise us and we advise them.

It seems that one of the problems of new business projects in Russia is the lack of knowledge about how to promote yourself so that as many people as possible will find out about them. What do you need to do for this?

Our Instagram is growing very actively. Initially our friends and acquaintances subscribed to it. We tried running ads, but they didn't work at all. It felt like it was very difficult to promote a small project. But when people talk about you who trust you, know you or have traveled with you - it works. Sincere recommendations from people, rather than advertising head-on, is the whole concept.

What are some of the challenges you face when working with gastronomic travel?

It is very difficult to explain why it is worth going with us and why there can be a good holiday in Russia. I see our mission as breaking the stereotype that there is nothing to do in Sochi, for example. Unfortunately, the stereotype about the Russian south being bad is still alive. But I see great potential in our south and in Russia as a whole. Because there are people who are doing great projects, and there are places where one wants to go. And when you explain to everyone why it is necessary to go, the person lights up. The main challenge is to communicate our values and the beauty of places to our audience. We do this through beautiful photographs and honest stories.

Every time we post photos and stories from new places in preparation for a new trip, the most popular reaction to them is: "Wow! I didn't think Sochi/Armenia/Kyrgyzstan (substitute your option) was so beautiful! I'm going!". And when we go to Rostov-on-Don to prepare a route, I plan to show its potential in order to interest people. To prove by our example that with 99% probability you will like it, just trust us, and that's all.

Are the realities of the pandemic affecting your work?

There are difficulties with that. Krasnodar Region has introduced the requirement for tourists to get vaccinated in order to check into hotels starting from August 1st, and we are organising tours to Sochi again in September. And it directly affects us, because we are waiting for the guests, but they may not be able to come.This is an absolute force majeure, and we can't do anything about it. Every other person asks about covid restrictions, and again, people are wary of traveling. If it happens that a person gets sick and cannot go, we offer to postpone the payment to the next trip, or go on another trip. That means that people's money is not burned, we don't do it that way.

Approximately how much does it cost you to organize a trip and do the financial expenses pay off?

When we started it, we didn't start from the position of earning, though, of course, it is possible to earn on tourist business. We just started to do it, because we couldn't help doing it.

Our tours are designed for a small number of people: in Sochi it is 6-7 people maximum, in Armenia - somewhere around 10. We put a lot into the price of the tours - we include not only the fact that we will be with the group for three days, but also the preparation, and force majeure, for example, if a person says 12 hours before the start of the program that he cannot come. This is the only way we can at least cover ourselves a little by adding some amount to the cost.

In August we are going to travel to Kyrgyzstan - and so far it is the most expensive - 70 thousand roubles. Journey is longer - 7 days, it is very difficult in respect of organization, because tourism is not developed, and in order to organize everything well, to find the guide, besides we had an idea to find the star-guide to look at the starry sky in the mountains - all this takes much time and efforts. Some people think it is expensive. But it's not, we analyzed the (tourism - ed.) market, we looked at what our competitors were offering and compared the programs, we have a different and very good product, the money is absolutely justified.

You analyzed the tourism niche in Russia before launching the project, what can you say about it?

The first thing we did when the idea of doing tours came to us was to check whether someone was already doing what we were just about to launch. It seemed to me that someone was definitely organizing unusual tours and gastropaths. But when I researched the first few Google pages on the subject of different tours, it pained me. Because 90% of the time they were exactly the same trips. I believe that you have to take a trip where people won't come or find it themselves, or it won't be as obvious to them.

Doing what everyone else is doing is very reluctant. And I am glad that there are more and more tourist projects which are not for the masses, but for the quality and uniqueness.

I want to ask you as an expert: what is the future of tourism in Russia?

I'd like to tell people who are scared of holidays in Russia to stop being afraid and to look at the various tourist projects, , which we have, that may surprise them in some way. Russia has tremendous potential. And it seems to me that tourism will develop in the direction of small travel agencies and projects that can find interesting places and introduce people to them.

I used to think, too, that it was better to go abroad than to travel in Russia. My husband had a different viewpoint. He would often call me on mini-vacations to Russian cities, and I would rebuff him and say that the infrastructure there was poor, it wasn't clear what to do, where to eat, where to live. But I do not support the position that when people do not like something, they complain, do nothing and wait for someone to improve their lives. There is no sense in complaining, but there is a sense in doing something to make it better.

I want to believe that by doing this project I give people faith in the country and in local projects. The mechanics are simple: those who have been on the journey with us and they liked it will come home, tell their friends, and those friends will tell their friends, and then little by little we will move towards the big changes that we will all make together.

Made in Russia // Made in Russia

Author: Karina Kamalova


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