| Аннотация | The Russian Federation has a high potential for tourism, but, according to the World Economic Forum, it ranks only 63rd in the world in the rating of travel and tourism sector competitiveness in 2013. The obstacle to tourism development in the country and its regions is still an underdeveloped tourist infrastructure, the slow pace of development and improvement of its basic elements. The article discloses the tourist infrastructure concept in the region, defines its structure, summarizes methodological approaches to its assessment and reveals the advantages and disadvantages of the considered methods. It presents the author’s method to estimate the regional tourism infrastructure development that has been approbated by the data of the Northwestern Federal District. The research has resulted in the regions’ differentiation by the following development levels: high, above average, average, below average. The evaluation results have helped to indicate the key problems, hindering the regional tourist infrastructure development, and to formulate the basic directions of its improvement. The author presents the matrix of tourism development prospects in the Northwestern Federal District regions, based on the portfolio analysis method. Thus, the most important condition for the tourism development is to achieve optimal levels of infrastructure provision in the region; and the regional economic policy in the sphere of tourism should focus on tourist infrastructure development. |
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