Characteristics of the main and related services in tourism. The concept and types of tourist services, their characteristic features

Tourist service - the result of the activities of the organization or individual entrepreneur to meet the needs of the tourist in the organization and implementation of the tour or its individual components. Tourist services must take into account the interests of tourists, be safe for the life and health of tourists and comply with the requirements of GOST.

Service itself is an invisible commodity of a special kind. Therefore, the production and sale of tourist services are regulated by different legislation than similar actions in relation to ordinary (tangible) goods. In the Law "On Protection of Consumer Rights", relations in terms of providing services to consumers are highlighted in a special section.

Tourist services provided to consumers by organizations or individual entrepreneurs include:

Tour operator services for the organization of domestic tourism;

Tour operator services for organizing outbound tourism;

Services of a tour operator for the organization of inbound tourism;

Travel agent services;

Individual services tour operator and travel agent;

Services for amateur tourism;

Excursion services.

In accordance with the Law Russian Federation“On Protection of Consumer Rights” the following requirements are mandatory for all types of tourist services:

Safety of life and health;

Safety of property of tourists and sightseers;

Environmental protection.

The provision of tourist services should not be accompanied by deterioration in the characteristics of the natural environment (clogging of the territory, trampling of the vegetation cover, damage and burning of shrubs and trees, etc.). The tourist services provided must meet the requirements for additional convenience for consumers, attractiveness and prestige of services. The recommended requirements for tourist services and service conditions include:

Fit for purpose;

Accuracy and timeliness of execution;

Complexity;

Ethics of service personnel;

Comfort;

Aesthetics;

Ergonomics.

Additional tourist and excursion services not provided for by the tour package, brought to the consumer in the free time mode ( extra food, intra-route transport, guide services, etc.). The WTO has developed 400 types of such services. The tourist purchases these services for an additional fee.


1.5 Features of the tourist service

The needs of a tourist, the sequence and measure of their satisfaction, to a large extent, differ from the constant vital needs of a person. The desire to move to a new place, to change one's usual location is caused, first of all, by non-material needs. The need to acquire new knowledge about previously unfamiliar places and visit favorite places is one of the basic needs of a tourist.

The need for a kind of rest or recovery in the process of moving or changing the usual location. Satisfaction of religious and cult needs in specific places or in places where religious shrines are located encourages people to move to these places. Business meetings, the purchase of marketable products in remote markets becomes the purpose of business trips. The desire to communicate with new people, meet, make friendships and form family relationships, meet old friends can become so aggravated at a certain time that a person is ready to leave his usual occupation, a permanent place and go on foot towards his desires, no matter how far these meetings take place . He becomes a tourist.

Thus, the needs for a tourist service are formed by the state of the individual, the community of people, environment and depends on the state of a person, his character, health, age, financial capabilities, the surrounding community, the level of general, religious, economic, physical and other types of culture.

Needs stimulate motives for their satisfaction, which can only happen by actually moving to non-everyday places of stay.

Hence the need for a tourist is the need for a cultural, cognitive, social, moral or physiological good experienced by a person or a group of people and which can only be satisfied as a result of a real, comfortable movement to places of non-everyday stay or residence.

Tourist needs develop in accordance with the law of increase and elevation of needs. The content of this law appears to us in the form of an objective, direct and stable causal relationship between the level of development of the individual (or society) and the need for tourism services. The more developed the individuality, the higher the level of its cultural, intellectual, educational development, the more insurmountable the need for new knowledge, travel, new acquaintances and communication. These needs are met to a large extent through tourism.

There is a similar relationship between the level of development of society, primarily economic, and the scale of tourist trips of citizens of a given country. Japan is a prime example of this. Over the past decades, the country has achieved significant economic indicators. At the same time, according to statistics, the Japanese became the most traveled nation.



The classification of tourist needs is fundamentally different from the well-known "pyramid" of ordinary needs. Here there are no stable primary and most important material needs, as in Maslow's pyramid. Priority depends on the subjective qualities of the tourist and may change even in the process of consuming the tourist service.

Based on the definition of tourist needs, the concept of tourist services can be defined as assistance in meeting the various needs of the individual by comfortable moving to non-everyday places of stay.

Along with the markets for goods, capital, work force there exists and interacts with them a vast market of services. The service sector is one of the most promising, rapidly developing sectors of the economy. AT developed countries the share of services in the gross domestic product exceeds 70%. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of people employed in the service sector. Despite the rapid development of this sphere and the strengthening of its role in the economy, a generally accepted definition of the concept of “services” has not yet been developed. According to F. Kotler, "services are objects of sale in the form of actions, benefits or satisfactions." From this definition it follows that services are not stored and the client is offered something that does not have a material form.

First, the service does not exist before it is provided, i.e. the product is created in the process of providing the service. This makes it impossible to compare the offers of two different sellers, two competing firms, even if the products seem to be identical. Comparison is possible only after receiving the service, while goods in physical form can be compared in various ways even before purchase. The only thing that can be done in the service market is to compare the expected and received benefits.

Secondly, very often the provision of services requires special knowledge and skills that are difficult for the buyer not only to evaluate, but often even to understand. High degree uncertainty in the provision of services puts the client in an extremely disadvantageous position, can cause a feeling of resentment, alertness, suspicion. Quite often, a client tends to work with the same seller - an insurance agent, a travel company, etc. This inertia works for the seller, since in this case it is the main factor in the frequency of contacts.

These common features are inherent in almost all service markets. Together with the features of the services themselves, they determine a special approach to entrepreneurial activity designed to meet the demand for services.

With all the variety of tourist services, they all have four common character traits:

Intangibility;

Inseparability of production and consumption;

quality variability;

Storage failure.

The intangibility, or intangible nature, of tourism services means that they cannot be demonstrated, seen, tasted or studied before being received. It is difficult for the buyer to understand and evaluate what is being sold, both before and sometimes after receiving the service. He is forced to take the word of the service seller. As a result, on the part of consumers there is always an element of hope and trust in the seller of the service.

At the same time, the intangibility of tourist services complicates the activities of the seller. Service providers face at least two problems. On the one hand, it is extremely difficult to show your product to customers, on the other hand, it is even more difficult to explain to them what they are paying money for. The seller can only describe the benefits that the buyer will receive after the provision of the tourist service, and the services themselves can only be evaluated after they have been completed.

An important feature is the inseparability of production and consumption of tourism services. The service can be rendered only when an order arrives or a client appears. From this point of view of some specialists, the inseparability of production and consumption is precisely the factor that makes tourism services truly services and distinguishes them from goods in material form.

The inextricable relationship between production and consumption suggests that many types of tourism services are inseparable from the one who provides them. So, personal service in a hotel is inseparable from hotel employees, service in a restaurant is inseparable from the waiter, ticket sales services are inseparable from the cashier.

Involving the buyer in the process of producing and consuming the service means that the seller must be concerned not only about what to produce, but also how to produce. The second task is of particular importance. Therefore, the correct selection and training of personnel in contact with customers is necessary to ensure the quality of services and the formation of customer loyalty to a particular company.

CHAPTER 2. QUALITY OF TOURISM PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

When working with service providers, you need:

a serious approach to the quality of services provided by the partner, as well as taking into account the reputation of the service provider among the partners of the tourism market;

compliance with the level and type of hotel, catering, transport services, the social segment of consumers and the type of tourism that a particular tour is oriented to;

careful and qualified approach to the preparation of all contractual documentation for cooperation, as this may further affect the credibility of the travel company.

Travel companies give great attention development of various services for vacationers. The company's goal is to increase brand awareness and create a brand that consumers trust. A large place in the percentage of the provision of tourist services of the company is the provision of basic tourist services such as accommodation and meals, transport services, complete set of tours. Excursion services are also an important element when completing a tour by a company (Figure 1).

Figure 1 - Various services of a travel company

Russian legislation and international tourism law impose on the tour operator a serious responsibility for providing all the services provided for by the tour and the contract with the tourist, regardless of whether these services are provided by the tour operator or a third party. The receptive (accepting tourists) tour operator is responsible to tourists for all services included in the tour package and provided additionally.

A service is an expedient production activity, the main feature of which is the coincidence of the processes of production, sale and consumption in time and space. Tourist services represent a large segment of the service sector, ensuring the satisfaction of people's needs and the implementation of their activities in their free time: recreation, entertainment, travel. According to the role in the structure of tourist consumption, there are:

1) basic tourist services;

2) additional tourist services;

3) related tourist services.

The main tourist services are oriented towards the consumption of tourists (for example, accommodation services, transfers, excursions); additional services can be produced both for tourists and for the local population. Related services are consumed mainly by the local population.

Basic tourist services are targeted services included in the tour, i.e. services that are purchased in a package that guarantees their obligatory consumption at the destination. The tourist package includes four mandatory elements: tourist center, transport, accommodation services, transfer. A tourist center is a place of rest for a tourist, including all its recreational opportunities: natural, cultural, historical, ecological, ethnic, socio-demographic, and infrastructural. This element is mandatory, because without an object of interest it is impossible to organize a trip. It must be chosen. Also, the tourist center is a holistic interest that combines all the motives of a person regarding recreational resources. Regardless of the individual desire of the consumer, the tour operator is obliged to reduce it to a single option - a tourist center. This is due to the fact that he is obliged to deliver the tourist to a specific place of rest, because it is there that transport will be ordered, it is there that the hotel will be ordered. Therefore, if a client says that he would like to visit, for example, a certain country, then it is necessary to clarify which area he is interested in, and then help him choose a specific tourist center. Transport is a means of transportation with which you can get to the tourist center. The most used as a means of transportation, of course, is the aircraft. For short distances - train, tourist bus, car. Most of the costs that determine the cost of a tour package are transportation costs. The more comfortable and fast mode of transport is used, the higher the cost of travel. It can be noted that despite the high cost of high-speed modes of transport, they are also used for short distances, as this saves tourists time for recreational purposes.

Accommodation services is a specific hotel offered to the tourist in the tourist center for the duration of the trip. Accommodations in hotels differ according to the type of hospitality services that are offered to the tourist. These can be hotels, motels, villas, apartments, campsites, etc. Catering services are part of the hospitality services, so they are not included as a separate element in the travel package. Breakfast is almost always included in the price of accommodation. The second meal can be outside the walls of the hotel or given to the independent choice of the tourists themselves. Rest and food - important elements human existence and their quality level determines the tourist experience and the cost of tourist services. The catering service always precedes entertainment and educational activities and is very important. Tourism organizers carefully study eating habits and try to please tourists as much as possible. There are special recommendations for catering for tourists of different nationalities. It should be varied, slightly different from the usual way of eating and be a little bit of a surprise.

Transfer is the delivery of a tourist from the place of arrival, located at the place of stay (airport, harbor, railway station), to the place of accommodation (hotel), where he will live, and back. Transfers are carried out using buses, sometimes taxis or limousines, if such transfers are included in the tour package or requested by the tourist. More precisely, a transfer is any transportation of a tourist within the boundaries of a tourist center. For this reason, trips from the hotel to the theater, to the museum and back can also be included here. But these transfers are usually not included in the tourist package, as clients do not always perceive it as a mandatory service.

By purchasing a package that includes the four required base element, the client not only has significant discounts from the tour operator, because he purchases a serial tourist product of a travel company, but he can always ask the tour operator to expand it by including other services, or he can do it on his own, directly in the tourist center.

1.1 Concept, essence and types tourism services

Tourism is the activity of persons traveling or staying in places outside their usual residence for a continuous period of not more than one year for leisure purposes or for business or other purposes, not connected with the performance of any remunerated activity in the place of residence.

The main criteria for tourism are as follows:

1. Change of place outside the usual place of residence. Tourism is a type of travel and covers people staying in places that are outside their permanent place of residence.

2. Movement of people in fairly short periods of time. According to statistics, the largest share is occupied by weekend tourism (2-3 days), followed by small tourist trips (6-7 days), a smaller share is occupied by 8-12-day trips.

3. Stay in another place, while the place of stay should not be a place of permanent or long-term residence. It should not be associated with labor activity(payroll). Another condition is that travelers must not stay in the place they visit for 12 or more months in a row. A person who stays or plans to stay for more than one year in a certain place is considered a permanent resident from the point of view of tourism and therefore cannot be called a tourist.

4. Departure of people from their place of permanent residence to another area, country for tourism purposes.

5. Payment for labor from a source in the place visited. The essence of this criterion is that main goal The trip should not be an activity paid from a source in the place visited. Any person entering a country for work paid from a source in that country is considered a migrant and not a tourist.

Consequently, tourism is a set of relationships, connections and phenomena that accompany the trip and stay of people in places that are not places of their permanent or long-term residence and are not related to their labor activity.

In addition, tourism is a tour operator and travel agency activity of tourist enterprises, as well as other organizers and intermediaries (for example, transport companies).

Unlike other activities, tourism is not one specific type of service, but a range of services, and its activities are aimed at end users.

Tourism statistics documents list the following typical tourism products:

one). Accommodation services: services of hotels and other accommodation facilities; second home services at own expense or free of charge.

2). Services of catering establishments.

3). Passenger Transport Services: Intercity Transportation by rail; transportation by road; transportation water transport; transportation by air; ancillary services related to passenger transport; leasing of passenger transport equipment; Maintenance and Maintenance passenger transport equipment.

4). Services travel agencies, tour operators and guides: services of travel agencies; tour operator services; Information Support tourists and tour guide services.

5). Cultural Services: Performing Arts; activities of museums and other services in the field of culture.

6). Recreational and other entertainment services: sports activities and amateur sports services; other services in the field of entertainment and recreation.

7). Various tourist services: financial services and insurance; other services for leasing goods; other tourist services.

The importance of the tourism market in the world is constantly increasing, which is associated with the increased influence of tourism on the economy of a particular country. In the economy of a particular country, tourism performs a number of important functions:

tourism is a source of foreign exchange earnings for the country and a means of providing employment;

· Tourism expands contributions to the balance of payments and the country's gross national product;

tourism contributes to the diversification of the economy, creating industries that serve the tourism sector;

· with the growth of employment in the field of tourism, the income of the population is growing and the level of well-being of the nation is increasing.

The development of the tourism market leads to the development of the country's economic infrastructure and peace processes. Thus, the tourism market should be considered in accordance with the economic relations of individual countries.

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Tourism as a commodity is sold in the form of services. A tourism service, like a service in general, is the action of a certain consumer value, expressed in a useful effect that satisfies one or another human need. At the same time, the service can be provided either by a thing, that is, with the help of a commodity, or in the process of functioning of living labor itself.

To determine the features of the provision of tourist services, it is necessary to consider the essential features and features of the service as such.

The fundamental essential feature of services is a single process of production and personalized subjective consumption. A specialized process of connecting a service provider with an individually specific consumer, purposefully bringing the labor itself and its results to the consumer, is called “service” or “service”. At the same time, a tangible, materialized product of production is not provided to the consumer. The service process, as a rule, is individual, multivariate, creative in nature, differentiated in time, place, terms and methods of providing services, etc.

Service - a process involving a series (or several) intangible actions that, of necessity, occur in the interaction between customers and service personnel, physical resources, systems of the enterprise-provider of services. This process is aimed at meeting the needs of the buyer of the service.

There are two types of services themselves: material (production), mediated with a thing, and intangible (non-productive), not related to material products, the production of which is inseparable from their consumption.

Referring to the definition adopted in international standards, then the tourist service is the result of the activities of an organization (tourist enterprise) or an individual entrepreneur to meet the relevant needs of tourists in organizing and implementing a tour and its individual components.

A tourist is a consumer of tourist services, works and goods - a tourist product (Figure 1). This is an indisputable truth, and a tourist center that forgets or neglects at least one of these components does not receive the planned tourism income.

On the contrary, those tourist centers in which everything is put at the service of the tourist and all branches of the tourism industry are harmoniously developing succeed and can allocate huge funds for further development tourism industry.

Figure 1 - The main components of the tourism product

In accordance with the previous analysis, a tourist service is a set of purposeful actions in the service sector that are focused on providing and satisfying the needs of a tourist or a sightseer, meeting the goals of tourism, the nature and direction of a tourist service, tour, tourist product, not contradicting the universal principles of morality and good order. .


Service itself is an invisible commodity of a special kind. The service arises in the process of its consumption and does not exist separately, by itself. This is the main difference between a service and a product.

In addition, the good is usually delivered to the consumer, and in relation to the tourism service, the consumer is delivered to the place of its generation. Therefore, the production and sale of tourist services are regulated by different legislation than similar actions in relation to ordinary (tangible) goods. And although in federal law“On the Fundamentals of Tourism Activities”, an attempt was made to apply the rules of retail sale and purchase to trade in services, which is incorrect from a legal point of view, since retail sale and purchase regulates the trade in material items.

The difficulty is the definition of export tourism services. In the classical version, the export tourist service of the tourist leader (head) of the tourist group in the part carried out abroad, as well as the services of the bus driver sent to work abroad, should be classified as export.

For Russia, it is also important to define tourist services for foreign tourists provided on the territory of Russia as export services. There is a corresponding clarification of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, which classifies tourist services provided to foreign tourists in Russia by local travel companies as export activities. It is because of this that these firms can receive remuneration for their work in foreign currency.

The composition of tourist services includes: booking services, including transportation and accommodation and all others, registration permits and parts of other formalities, all types of transportation, meetings, seeing off and transfers, accommodation, meals, excursions and attractions, medical support and insurance, services of guides-interpreters and other provision.

The services may include the leader of a tourist group, a guide-interpreter, who can sometimes act as a guide, if this does not contradict the local rules for organizing excursions, for business tourists, the services of an adaptation specialist can be specially provided.

The list of services for each tour is different and is determined by the program, and each of these services contains many incoming elements.

If we consider tourism, then general principles it is obligatory in the tourist package to have at least two services - transportation and overnight stays. The package of services can be expanded by the tourism organizer at the request of the tourist, or such tourist services are provided by the organizers of the reception of tourists at the place of choice.

The latter is very important, since the principles and traditions of price competition in the sale of tours lead to minimization of the price of the tour, by minimizing, first of all, the set of services. In addition, one should take into account the mentality factor inherent in almost tourists of all nationalities, with the exception of the most affluent segments of the population.

We note separately psychological factor. A tourist at the stage of choosing and purchasing a tour seeks by any means to minimize spending money on its purchase. Spending money is an inherent pleasure of a tourist service, but already directly on vacation.

The tourist wants to spend money on vacation at his own discretion, and therefore the purchase additional services in the form of excursions and other entertainment is included in the range of activities called free spending of money. The thesis, a priori applied to tourism in this case, is that a tourist spends significantly more money than in your daily life. In general, he saved them up for a whole year, and on vacation or a tourist trip he spends them with pleasure quite easily, at least for a week or two, freeing himself from the hardships of saving.

According to international statistics, tourists abroad spend up to 600 USD per week at the place of stay. At the same time, most of Russian tourists spends abroad, in general, two to three times more than tourists from other nations and countries.

Specialists of Russian tourism distinguish five clear special factors inherent in tourist services:

Unlike a good, which is only ready for consumption when it has finished moving from the place of production to the place of consumption, tourism services and goods can be consumed if the consumer is brought to the place of their production;

The formation of consumer income in that part of it that is intended for the purchase of tourist services and goods is regulated by the conditions of the country of permanent residence, although the consumption process itself is formed by the conditions of countries of temporary residence or world prices;

In the process of tourism, the consumer bears the costs both for meeting the needs that do not depend on being away from home, and caused by the very fact of travel;

The process of tourist consumption is limited in time (travel).

Tourist service as an "invisible" product has a number of features:

intangible nature;

Inability to accumulate;

Production and consumption take place simultaneously;

The consumer participates in the process of production of tourist services.

Tour is a complex various services(accommodation, meals, transport services, household, tourist, excursion and others), combined on the basis of the main purpose of travel and provided on a specific route at a specific time.

In addition to services, tourists can buy goods for tourism purposes. The totality of services and goods for tourism purposes forms the concept of "tourist product".

Tourist product includes:

Tours united by purpose (educational, health-improving, etc.);

Tourist and excursion services of various types (accommodation, meals, transport services, etc.);

Tourist souvenir goods (cards, postcards, badges, souvenirs, etc.).

Tourist services offered as a commodity on the world market are quite diverse. These include :

Tourist accommodation services (in hotels, motels, boarding houses, campsites, boatings);

Services for the movement of tourists to the country of destination and around the country various types passenger transport;

Services for providing tourists with food (in restaurants, cafes, bars, taverns, cafeterias, boarding houses);

Services aimed at meeting the cultural needs of tourists (visiting theaters, concert halls, museums, art galleries, natural and historical reserves, historical and cultural monuments, festivals, sports competitions);

Services aimed at meeting the business interests of tourists (participation in congresses, symposiums, scientific conferences, fairs and exhibitions);

Services trade enterprises(sale of souvenirs, gifts, postcards, transparencies);

Documentation services (passports, visas, etc.).

The tourist can be provided with either certain types services of his choice, or a full range of services.

Tourist services have some features that are characteristic of services in general, in comparison with traditional goods. Four specific features are meant, namely: intangibility, inseparability from the source, impermanence of quality, perishability.

At the same time, these features, characteristic of services in general, have their own specifics in tourism. First of all, we are talking about the complexity of tourist services, which is understood as such a specific property of service activities, which is due to the provision of a whole range of services.

The complex of tourist services includes heterogeneous types of services, combined by type of activity into the following groups: hotel services, catering services, beverage sales services, canteen services and ready-made food delivery services, travel agency and travel agent services, tourist assistance services.

It is also necessary to note the positive property of the specific feature of the non-permanence of tourist services, namely, that due to this property, the consumer tourist market is not actually saturated.

For example, if a durable product is purchased, then as long as this product does not become morally obsolete or fails, there is no new need to purchase a similar product in return.

The tour as a product is not saved, upon returning from the tour there are impressions, memories, photographs, souvenirs that encourage you to go on a trip again either to the same place or to another.

Using this property, travel agencies try to maintain relationships with regular customers, offer them such trips to which they go again.

Tourist services are not material, as they are social and cultural (non-material), since they are determined by the activities of the service provider to meet the physical, ethical, intellectual, spiritual and other needs.

Tourist services are perceived by all human senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight, taste). This perception is subjective, and it may not coincide with the consumer's expectations obtained when buying a tour from a travel agency.

Subjective, emotional perception of tourist services leaves an imprint not only on consumption, but also on the ability to give an objective assessment of the result. production activities travel firms, which acts as a beneficial effect.

Tourism services are characterized by the inseparability of production and consumption. Since the service is the result of direct interaction between the performer and the consumer, the process of providing a tourist service (production) occurs in parallel with consumption.

Tourist benefits are separated from the buyer in time and space, the consumer cannot use them until they are consumed, which is carried out directly at the place of provision of tourist services. This property is further enhanced by the fact that in order to gain access to tourist benefits, it is necessary to set off on a journey, overcome the distance, and reach the destination. The consumer needs professional help.

Necessary condition consumption of tourist services is the personal participation of the client in the process of providing the service. From how he participates, from establishing good contact between the performer and the consumer, from personal qualities the client depends on the quality of the service provided.

The possibility of performing tourist services is under the influence of external factors that are of a force majeure nature and do not depend on the actions of the seller or buyer: natural disasters, aggravation of the international situation, military operations, etc.

Thus, the tourist service has its own specific features:

1. Tourist service is a complex of tangible and intangible components, characterized by complex system relationships between different ones.

2. Demand for tourism services is extremely elastic with respect to income levels and prices, but largely depends on political and social conditions.

3. As a rule, the consumer cannot see the tourist product before its consumption, and the consumption itself in most cases is carried out directly at the place of production of the tourist service.

4. The consumer overcomes the distance separating him from the tourist service itself and the place of consumption, and not vice versa.

5. The level of quality of a tourist service depends on variables such as space and time, and fluctuations in demand are characteristic of it.

6. The offer of tourist services is characterized by inflexible production. It can be consumed directly on site. A hotel, airport, recreation center cannot be transferred at the end of the season or to another region. They cannot adjust in time and space to changing demand.

7. The tourism service is created by the efforts of many enterprises, each of which has its own working methods, specific needs and different commercial goals.

8. High quality tourist services cannot be achieved even if there are minor shortcomings, since the service of tourists consists of these very “little things”, by which the service as a whole is judged.

9. The assessment of the quality of a tourist service is highly subjective: the consumer's assessment is greatly influenced by persons who are not directly related to the package of purchased services (for example, local residents, members of a tourist group, etc.).

10. The quality of tourist services is influenced by external factors of force majeure (natural conditions, weather, tourism policy, international events, etc.).


Tourism as defined by the International Academy of Tourism (Monte Carlo, Monaco) represents general concept for all forms of temporary departure of people from their place of permanent residence for recreational purposes or to meet educational interests in their free time or for professional and business purposes without engaging in paid activities along with temporary stay.

Tourism is the activity of persons traveling or staying in places outside their usual residence for a continuous period of not more than one year for leisure purposes or for business or other purposes, not connected with the performance of any remunerated activity in the place of residence.

Thus, the definition of tourism is based on the following features:

  • - tourism is the result of the movement of people;
  • - tourism always includes two elements: travel to the destination and stop there;
  • - travel means leaving the country (or region) where the tourist permanently resides;
  • - travel is a temporary movement of a tourist along a tourist route.

The main criteria for tourism are as follows:

  • 1) Change of place outside the usual place of residence. Tourism is a type of travel and covers people staying in places outside their permanent place of residence;
  • 2) Movement of people in fairly short periods of time. According to statistics, the largest share is occupied by weekend tourism (2-3 days), followed by small tourist trips (6-7 days), a smaller share is occupied by 8-12-day trips;
  • 3) Stay in another place, while the place of stay should not be a place of permanent or long-term residence. It should not be related to labor activity (wage). This nuance should be taken into account, since the behavior of a person engaged in labor activity differs from the behavior of a tourist and cannot be classified as tourism. Another condition is that travelers must not stay in the place they visit for 12 or more months in a row. A person staying or planning to stay for more than one year in a certain place is considered a permanent resident from the point of view of tourism and therefore cannot be called a tourist;
  • 4) Departure of people from their place of permanent residence to another area, country for tourism purposes. Movements within the area of ​​permanent residence (for example, daily commuting) cannot be classified as tourism;
  • 5) Payment for labor from a source in the visited place. The essence of this criterion is that the main purpose of the trip should not be the implementation of activities paid from a source in the place visited. Any person entering a country for work paid from a source in that country is considered a migrant and not a tourist. This applies not only to international tourism, but also to tourism within one country. Every person traveling to another location within the same country (or to another country) for an activity paid from a source in that place (or country) is not considered a tourist of that place.

Analysis of the above features and criteria allows us to identify the signs of tourism:

  • - business trips, as well as travel for the purpose of spending free time - this is a movement outside the usual place of residence and work. If a resident of the city moves around it in order to make purchases, then he is not a tourist, since he does not leave his functional place;
  • Tourism is not only an important branch of the economy, but also an important part of people's lives. It covers the relationship of a person with his external environment.

Consequently, tourism is a set of relationships, connections and phenomena that accompany the trip and stay of people in places that are not places of their permanent or long-term residence and are not related to their work activity.

Tourism is a tour operator and travel agency activity of tourist enterprises, as well as other organizers and intermediaries (for example, transport companies).

All types of products or services consumed by tourists can be classified as follows:

  • - hotels and restaurants (including catering);
  • - services of travel agencies and travel agencies;
  • - services of excursion bureaus and others.

Tourism statistics documents list the following typical tourism products:

  • 1) accommodation services: services of hotels and other accommodation facilities; second home services at own expense or free of charge;
  • 2) services of catering establishments;
  • 3) passenger transport services: intercity transportation by rail; transportation by road; transportation by water transport; transportation by air; ancillary services related to passenger transport; leasing of passenger transport equipment; maintenance and current repair of passenger transport equipment;
  • 4) services of travel agencies, tour operators and guides: services of travel agencies; tour operator services; information support for tourists and services of guides;
  • 5) cultural services: performing arts; activities of museums and other cultural services;
  • 6) recreational services and other services in the field of entertainment: sports activities and services in the field of amateur sports; other services in the field of entertainment and recreation;
  • 7) various tourist services: financial services and insurance; other services for leasing goods; other tourist services.