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BREST, 1 May (BelTA) – Belarus expects to welcome more than 500,000 tourists in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha national park in 2018, BelTA learned from Director General of the park Alexander Bury.

In 2017, the national park was visited by 465,000 tourists, including about 70,000 foreigners. “The number of tourists is on the rise. I can forecast that this year the number of tourists will be higher than in the previous year, as the increase in tourist numbers in Q1 2018 made up about 15%. I think we will surpass the mark of 500,000,” said Alexander Bury.

The number of Belarusian tourists has been steadily rising. More foreigners are taking the advantage of visiting Belovezhskaya Pushcha visa-free. If earlier the only way to visit the national park was via the border crossing point for pedestrians and cyclists Bialowieza-Pererov, this year the national park has been included in the Brest tourist and recreation zone which envisages a ten-day visa-free stay for foreign citizens.

“The number of tourists visiting the pushcha via the border crossing point increases every year, with a 2-3-time progress. After the new free-visa rules were introduced, the border checkpoint was crossed by about 1,500 tourists within the first year, and 3,500 tourists within the second one. Last year the number of tourists made up about 5,000. In January-April 2018 we have already surpassed the last year’s figures,” the director general of the park said.

The northern part of the park has been recently used more actively for recreational purposes. “The tourist potential of the national park is huge. We should understand that the pushcha is a living organism which will not tolerate the recreational burden for too long. We have been developing the central and northern parts of the park in order to give a break to its southern part with a well-developed infrastructure,” Alexander Bury said.