Tourism is an area that most people associate with new experiences, relaxation and pleasure. It has firmly entered the life of a modern person, striving to explore unexplored lands, monuments of culture, history, nature, as well as the traditions and customs of different peoples.
Today, tourism is a powerful industry. It includes a variety of components. One of them is the tourism infrastructure and its components.
Basic concept
Tourist infrastructure is a set of hotels, vehicles, catering and leisure organizations, business, educational, sports, he alth and other purposes. But not only these enterprises serve travelers. This category includes organizations engaged in travel agency and tour operator activities. One of the elements of this area are companies offering excursion services, as well as the services of guides and translators.
BThe infrastructure of tourist facilities also includes those organizations whose activities are not directly related to the area under consideration. However, in those places where a large number of travelers aspire to go, they offer their services to them too. This list includes car companies that provide transport for excursion services, companies that offer car rental services, as well as cafes and restaurants, museums and theaters, sports clubs and cinemas, zoos and casinos.
Composition of tourism infrastructure
Of all the facilities that work in the travel service sector, two elements can be singled out. The first element of the tourism infrastructure is the hospitality industry. This includes businesses that provide accommodation and catering services.
The second element of the tourist infrastructure is represented by a three-level system. Consider it in more detail.
At the first level of this system is the production infrastructure. It includes existing buildings and structures, transport networks and systems that are not directly related to the product of this area, but at the same time, their presence is necessary for the provision of services to travelers. These are communications and transport, utilities and energy, security, insurance and finance.
On the second and third levels of the tourist infrastructure are organizations and enterprises whose activities directly affect the formation of the final tourist product. What do they representyourself?
The second level includes businesses that produce typical travel products. The result of their activities are goods for recreation and vehicles, souvenirs and excursion services, leisure activities, issuance of visas, etc.
At the third level are enterprises that produce atypical products and services for this area. These are clothing for tourism and recreation, cosmetics, photographic products, medicines. Services include medical, hairdressing, cultural and educational.
Thus, at the first level of the infrastructure of the tourism industry is a group of enterprises of the primary tourism product. On the second and third - secondary.
Main Ingredients
The elements of the tourism market infrastructure include:
- Material base belonging to specialized business entities. These include travel agents and operators, tour agencies and manufacturers of products for this industry.
- The system of state bodies that create the legal framework for tourism, as well as control and regulate this area in a particular region. This includes government organizations, businesses and institutions.
- A system of commercial and non-commercial business entities, which operate to develop and support tourism in the region. This list includes various exhibitions, fairs, exchanges, etc.
Main Functions
When considering the concept of tourism infrastructure, it becomes obvious that itrepresents one of the parts of the infrastructure of the entire region. Being part of this vast complex, it is designed to perform a number of specific functions.
Among them - providing, integration and regulatory. What is characteristic of each of them?
- The supporting function of the infrastructure of tourist facilities lies in the creation of the necessary conditions conducive to the organization of services for tourists.
- Integration serves to create and further maintain links between enterprises in this area, as well as to form tourist complexes in the region.
- The regulatory function for tourism infrastructure is the most important. It creates new jobs, influences consumer demand, develops industries that produce commodities, and promotes the growth of financial revenues in the form of taxes.
Through these functions, tourism infrastructure contributes to the following:
- regulates and accelerates the turnover, sharply reacting to the slightest market fluctuations;
- provides mutual links between sellers and buyers of goods, as well as both with financial companies - owners of money capital;
- with the help of a system of contracts allows you to form business relations on an organizational and legal basis;
- provides government regulation while supporting the organized movement of tourism products;
- carries out legal andfinancial control over the movement of financial and commodity flows;
- provides audit, consulting, innovation, marketing and information services, using various institutions of the tourism market infrastructure.
Impact on the economy
The creation and development of tourism infrastructure is beneficial for any state, because this area has a direct impact on the country's economy, including direct and indirect. The first of them is the attraction of funds by tourist enterprises for the services they provide, as well as the material support of people employed in this area, the expansion of the labor market, and the growth of tax revenues to the budget.
Indirect impact on the economy of the country and the region of tourism infrastructure lies in its multiplier effect in the field of intersectoral interaction. The level of this indicator depends on the share of income that will be spent within the boundaries of a particular region.
Hotel industry
When creating a tourist infrastructure, it is impossible to avoid the issue of accommodation for travelers. Without this, the provision of services in this area becomes simply impossible.
The hotel industry is the backbone of the hospitality system. It includes a variety of options for both individual and collective accommodation of vacationers. Consider their varieties in more detail.
Hotels
These enterprises are classical representatives of the tourism infrastructure. Their difference from other objects for temporaryaccommodation of people consists in the rooms provided to visitors. In addition, hotels are enterprises that provide such mandatory services as daily bed making, cleaning of living quarters and sanitary facilities, etc.
When forming the tourism infrastructure, the need for such institutions is taken into account, based on which both separate enterprises and entire hotel chains controlled by one management and carrying out collective business can be created.
Specialized establishments
In addition to hotels, the tourist infrastructure includes other means of accommodation for travelers. These include furnished rooms and boarding houses, as well as other facilities that have a number of rooms and provide certain mandatory services.
There are also specialized establishments for servicing vacationers in which there are no rooms. The starting unit for them is the collective bedroom or dwelling. In such establishments, a place to sleep is provided, but at the same time, the function regarding the accommodation of tourists is not their main one. These are he alth institutions (rehabilitation centers and sanatoriums), public transport with sleeping places equipped in it (ships, trains), as well as congress centers that hold conferences, symposiums and other events with accommodation for participants at their base.
The list of other collective means of tourist infrastructure includes complexes of houses, apartment-type hotels, as well as bungalows. In them, in addition to spending the night, the client is provided with a minimum list ofservices.
Food Industry
This area is one of the most important components of the tourism infrastructure. After all, food is an integral part of any tour.
Depending on customer service, such businesses are divided into:
- working with a permanent contingent (at hotels, sanatoriums, etc.);
- serving a variable contingent (restaurants in the locality).
The catering system of the tourist infrastructure includes restaurants of various classes, bars, cafes, canteens, self-service and fast food outlets. All of them are designed to meet the needs of travelers who have arrived in the region.
Meals
When drawing up a contract for the provision of tourist services, it must contain indications of the availability of breakfast or half board (two meals a day), as well as full board (three meals a day). Some expensive service options include the ability to provide meals in any quantity and at any time.
Leisure activities
Food establishments included in the tourist infrastructure are designed to perform not only their direct function regarding cooking. They should also provide an opportunity for visitors to have fun while having an unforgettable experience.
Thanks to this, many tourists prefer to go on gastronomic and drinking tours, during which they get acquainted with the national cuisines of different countries.
Tour Operators
There are organizing companies in the tourism businesstraveler movements. These are tour operators and travel agents.
The first of them are legal entities or individual entrepreneurs whose activities are related to the formation, promotion and sale of the final product of this area. They form tours, compiling an orderly and interconnected in terms of time, consistent in quality and cost, a sequence of services and works. At the same time, contracts are concluded for booking seats, their reservation and provision. Tour operators play an important role in tourism, because their task is to package various services.
Travel Agents
These objects of tourism infrastructure are legal entities or individual entrepreneurs whose activities are related to the promotion and sale of the final product of the sphere in question. Such a company acquires tours developed by the tour operator and sells them to the consumer.
At the same time, the cost of travel from the place where the group will be formed to the first hotel or other accommodation point, as well as from the last point of the route back is added to the proposed product.
Transport infrastructure
The objects included in it are one of the constituent elements of the tourism industry. Transport tourism infrastructure is a set of transport organizations that transport travelers.
Existingin each country the system is formed using the following:
- animals - dogs, donkeys, horses, camels, elephants;
- mechanical ground aids - bicycles, cars, buses, trains;
- air vehicles;
- water transport - boats, rafts, sea and river surface vessels.
Based on the stages of the work performed, they distinguish:
- transfer, which is the delivery of tourists to the hotel from the train station or airport terminal and similarly back at the end of the tour;
- transportation to the destination over long distances;
- transportation during train and bus tours;
- cargo-type transportation for shopping tours.
It is worth noting that the development of tourism directly depends on the development of transport. It takes place, as a rule, with the advent of faster, more comfortable and safer means of transportation.
