Rated Mature Belarus
Despite an oppressive and totalitarian political regime, Belarus’ gambling market has managed to grow and evolve from a troublesome teen into a functioning adult with a fairly new online gambling law which has just come of age.
A curious little country, Belarus is beginning to emerge as one of the most interesting places to visit. For a long time, Belarus was a considered a blank spot embedded in the heart of Eastern Europe. Tere was very little to pique the interest of international visitors. A lengthy visa process, an underdeveloped service industry and dreary reputation made it unappealing to the vast majority of foreign travellers. Back in 2013, just 137,000 tourists arrived in Belarus and the vast majority of these hailed from neighbouring Russia.
Belarus sits in the middle of Eastern Europe surrounded by Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Ukraine and is made up of six provinces (Vitebsk, Minsk, Mogilev, Gomel, Brest, Grodno) and one municipality (Minsk City).
Despite its slightly drab reputation the country is full of surprises. Minsk was rebuilt after World War II and so today is a modern city boasting fashionable cafes, sushi bars and nightclubs.
Belarus is famous for its variety of sugar-coated sweets; nightlife; Stalin-era architecture; ancient castles and national parks. Forests, rivers and lakes occupy a large part of the territory, hence its nickname ‘the lungs of Europe,’ whilst it is considered to be safe, clean and with an extremely low unemployment rate (around 0.2 per cent average).
A new 30-day visa free regime was introduced last year for 74 countries if they fly in and depart from Minsk Airport and 2019 saw around 405,000 tourists with tourism revenue reaching US$1.2bn, contributing around six per cent to the GDP. Tere are around 1,500 companies involved in the tourism sector plus over 600 hotels and accommodation establishments.
Counterbalancing all this positivity, and despite the end of the Soviet empire some 30 years ago, Belarus still exists under a communist style dictatorship led by President Alexandr Lukashenko.
President Lukashenko, is the country’s first and, to date, only directly elected President who has held office since 1994. At the time, the country craved a new leader after the
collapse of communism. He consolidates his power through authoritarian means and a centralised economic system, whilst there are government restrictions on political and civil rights and freedom of speech and press.
Russia and Belarus are technically part of a ‘union state’ after signing a treaty back in 1999 to link the two via economic integration. However, Belarus’ hesitancy to fully implement this continues to cause tension.
Huge protests coupled with Covid travel restrictions saw Belarus’ tourism figures come to an abrupt halt. Tourism data shows just 81,000 visitors in 2020 of which around 66 per cent
NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE / MARKET DATA P67
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