Russia using its out-to-the-west enclave to develop a casino zone designed to attract gamblers from western Europe
Source: Gummy-beer_Wikipedia
THE Russian government is turning its attention to the development of the Yantarny gambling zone.
This is one of the country’s five gambling zones and is located in the Kaliningrad region. The region was formerly named Konigsberg and is a Russian enclave situated between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Sea.
According to state plans, the development of the zone will mainly rely on the attraction of tourists from western European countries, in particular France, Germany and the Czech Republic.
As part of these plans, the government has already approved significant expansion of the zone, which is located close to the city of Yantarny’s airport. It is estimated that after the expansion the total area of the zone will reach 267,000sq.m. In addition to the zone itself, the government also has plans to make investments in the development of the airport, the capacity of which is expected to grow to five million people a year by 2016.
According to Nikolai Tsukanov, the governor of the Kaliningrad region, there are plans to establish tourist infrastructure close to Yantarnay and even within its territory.
Among the objectives are the building of 20 high-level and budget hotels, exhibition centres and other entertainment infrastructure. In addition, there is also a scheme for the establishment of a sanitary rehabilitation centre close to the zone that will have direct access to the sea.
Tsukanov has also said that the new Yantarny gambling resort will have many similarities with some European resorts, such as the German Baden-Baden and the Polish Sopot.
The plans for the development of Yantarny have already been welcomed by many Russian analysts in the field of gambling and leading businessmen. According to Alexander Shokhin, president of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, an organisation based in Moscow that promotes the interests of business in Russia, the Yantarny zone has the best climatic and geographic conditions for the development of gambling, compared with other Russian zones and will be able to successfully compete with foreign gambling zones and in particular those located in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Read the full article in the September issue of InterGaming
