Penza, 7 December 2015. PenzaNews. The Penza region was placed 63rd in the tourism attractiveness rating of Russia regions, a joint research effort by the information communications center “Rating” and “Vacation in Russia” magazine.

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To rate the regions, the analysts chose the following factors: level of tourism business development, tourism services turnout, popularity on internal and foreign tourism markets, uniqueness, eco-health of the region, level of criminal, level of transportation and social infrastructure, coverage of culture landmarks, and online popularity of the region as a tourism brand.

The resulting lists and rankings were assigned using state statistics and open source information on each factor.

Taking the first place in one of the factors gave a region 8.5 points, the places below getting 0.1 points less with each rank lost. Afterwards, the nine lists were combined in a general rating, with its headliners and underdogs.

The regions that received more than 50 points and were placed 1st to 16th were included in the first group, the leaders being the Krasnodar Krai (70.9 points), as well as St. Petersburg and Moscow (63.2 and 60.7 points respectively).

According to rating notes, almost all top regions have already found their niche in the tourism sector, many of them choosing tourism as their priority field.

The regions with 30-50 points that were placed 17th to 65th were included in the second category. One of them is the Penza region, with 30.8 points.

The third group, with places 66th to 85th, gathered the regions with under 30 points. The lowest marks were given to the Yevreyskaya autonomous region (18.3 points), Ingushetia (17.4 points), and Tyva Republic (16.5 points).