THE TOURIST AND RECREATIONAL SYSTEM IN THE LIGHT OF ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Abstract

The phenomenon of tourism attracts an increasing number of researchers every year. Due to the fact that tourism activities are interdisciplinary, intersectoral, and interregional in nature, researchers from different scientific fields are engaged in the study: geographers, economists, financiers, biologists, lawyers, doctors, etc. Tourist activities are carried out in a specific territory with certain recreational and socio-economic resources, which is why the most important research on tourist and recreational systems (TRS) was carried in Russian science by economic geographers. The article contains an overview of the works by Russian and foreign authors engaged in the study of TRS; the terms ‘system’ and ‘complex’ are analyzed both in the modern sense and in the interpretation of the authors of previous centuries. It should be noted that researchers often overlook the fact that the TRS as a social economic system is based on production relations inherent in the current level of development of productive forces. The article deals with the functional component structure of the TRS from the standpoint of economic theory, as a result of which the central subsystem (tourists) was found to be a broader subsystem, including tourists and service personnel, i.e. human resources. Further, it is substantiated that the main subsystem is the management authorities: a TRS can develop without this subsystem, but its development would be based on chaotical and uncontrollable use of recreational resources and infrastructure, eventually leading to the depletion of resources, environmental degradation, and a decrease in the attractiveness of this TRS for recreationists.