Excursion and leisure services for tourists with elements of immersion in the berthing areas of cruise ships in Karelia

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the possibilities for the development of excursion and leisure services in the places of cruise ship berths passing through the Lake-river systems of the Republic of Karelia: Ladoga and Onega Lakes and the White Sea. The article describes the main services for tourists of motor ships in the ports of Petrozavodsk, Sortavala, Medvezhegorsk and Belomorsk, and also offers additional services with using the technology of mixing real and virtual reality, i.e. in the immersive format. The list of such proposals includes services of the new tourist facilities, such as the Historical Park «Bastion», the Ethnic Village «Kalevala», an unusual art cluster «Komarinaya Tropa» at the Alexandrovsky Factory in the historical center of Petrozavodsk, or a new outlook on the existing suggestions, for example, making changes in the excursion by adding the game program «Karelian Masters». According to the authors, creating the effect of presence or immersion of tourists in the offered services will be in demand in the market among the cruise companies for drawing up tourist service programs, and it will increase the demand for cruise travel at all. For the local Karelian community, the proposed options for additional services will be a good opportunity for museums, leisure and transport organizations, and tourist enterprises to develop, and it will increase the attractiveness of Karelia for cruise companies. This study of the services provided to the cruise ships is the first in Karelia, and in the future it should be expanded and deepened on the topic.