MOSCOW — Despite being home to some of the world’s great attractions — from Red Square and the Kremlin in Moscow to the famed Hermitage museum in Saint Petersburg — Russia has struggled to attract tourists.
With some of the most expensive hotels in the world, inadequate tourism infrastructure, a reputation for surly service and bureaucratic headaches for visitors, Russia is hardly an easy destination for travellers.
Now the Russian government is hoping to change all that and is planning to launch an ambitious programme to make the country a tourist paradise by 2016 and thrust it into the ranks of major tourism destinations.