Tourism is an area that most people associate with new experiences, relaxation and pleasure. He firmly entered the life of a modern person seeking to explore uncharted lands, cultural monuments, history, nature, as well as traditions and customs of different nations.
Today, tourism is a powerful industry. It includes a variety of components. One of them is the tourist infrastructure and its components.
Basic concept
Tourist infrastructure is a combination of hotels, vehicles, catering and leisure activities, business, educational, sports, recreation and other purposes. But not only these enterprises serve travelers. This category includes organizations engaged in travel agent and tour operator activities. One of the elements of this area are companies offering excursion services, as well as services of guides and translators.
The infrastructure of tourist facilities includes those organizations whose activities are not directly related to the sphere in question. However, in those places where a large number of travelers want to go, they offer their services to them. This list includes fleets that provide transport for excursion services, companies offering 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 objects whose work is related to the service sector of travelers, two elements can be distinguished. The first element of tourism infrastructure is the hospitality industry. This includes enterprises that provide accommodation services for travelers and their meals.
The second element of tourist infrastructure is a three-level system. Let's 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 sphere, but at the same time their presence is necessary to provide services to travelers. These are communications and transport, utilities and energy, security, insurance and finance.
At the second and third levels of tourism infrastructure are organizations and enterprises whose activities directly affect the formation of the final tourism product. What are they?
The second level includes enterprises that produce products typical for travelers. The result of their activities are leisure goods and vehicles, souvenirs and excursion services, leisure activities, visa issuance, etc.
At the third level are enterprises that produce atypical products, as well as services for this sector. These are clothes for tourism and recreation, cosmetics, photo products, medicines. Of the services allocated medical, hairdressing, cultural and educational.
Thus, at the first level of the infrastructure of the tourism industry is a group of enterprises of primary tourism products. On the second and third - secondary.
Main components
The elements of the tourism market infrastructure include:
- The material base belonging to specialized business entities. These include travel agents and operators, tour agencies and manufacturers producing goods for this area.
- The system of state bodies that create the legal framework of tourism, as well as controlling and regulating this area in a particular region. This includes government organizations, enterprises and institutions.
- A system of commercial and non-profit business entities, the functioning of which is carried out to develop and support tourism in the region. This list includes a variety of exhibitions, fairs, exchanges, etc.
Main functions
When considering the concept of tourist infrastructure, it becomes obvious that it is one of the parts of the infrastructure of the entire region. Being part of this vast complex, it is called upon to fulfill 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 is to create the necessary conditions conducive to the organization of services for tourists.
- Integration serves to create and further maintain relations between enterprises in this field, as well as to form tourist complexes in the region.
- The regulatory function for tourism infrastructure is the most important. With its help, new jobs are created, there is an impact on consumer demand, industries that produce consumer goods are developed, and the growth of financial revenues to the budget in the form of taxes is promoted.
Within the framework of these functions, tourist infrastructure contributes to the following:
- streamlines and accelerates commodity circulation, sharply reacting to the slightest fluctuations in the market;
- provides mutual relations between sellers and buyers of goods, as well as those and others with financial companies - owners of money capital;
- with the help of a system of contracts allows you to create business relations on a legal basis;
- provides state regulation while supporting the organized movement of tourism products;
- exercises legal and financial control over the movement of financial and commodity flows;
- provides audit, consulting, innovative, 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 these is the attraction of funds by travel agencies for the services they provide, as well as the material support of people employed in this field, the expansion of the labor market, and the growth of tax revenues to the budget.
An indirect influence on the economy of the country and the region of tourism infrastructure lies in its multiplicative 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 get around the issue of accommodation for travelers. Without this, the provision of services in this area becomes simply impossible.
The hotel industry is the foundation 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 classic representatives of the tourism infrastructure. Their difference from other objects for temporary accommodation of people consists in the rooms provided to visitors. In addition, hotels are enterprises that provide such compulsory services as daily bedding, cleaning of premises and a toilet, etc.
In the formation of tourist infrastructure, the need for such institutions is taken into account, on the basis of which both separate enterprises and entire hotel chains can be created, controlled by one management and carrying out a collective business.
Specialized institutions
In addition to hotels, tourist facilities include other means of accommodating travelers. These include furnished rooms and guest 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 initial unit for them is a collective bedroom or home. In such establishments, a place is provided for an overnight stay, but at the same time, the function regarding the accommodation of tourists is not their main one. These are health-improving institutions (rehabilitation centers and sanatoriums), public transport with berths equipped in it (ships, trains), as well as congress centers that conduct conferences, symposiums and other events on their base with accommodation for participants.
The list of other collective means of tourism infrastructure includes complexes of houses, apartment-type hotels, as well as bungalows. In addition to overnight stays, they provide the client with a minimum list of services.
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 enterprises are divided into:
- working with a constant contingent (at hotels, resorts, etc.);
- serving a variable contingent (restaurants of the village).
The tourist infrastructure catering system includes restaurants of various classes, bars, cafes, canteens, self-service points and fast food. All are designed to meet the needs of travelers arriving in the region.
Types of nutrition
When drawing up a contract for the provision of tourist services, it must contain indications of breakfast or half board (two meals a day), as well as a full board (three meals a day). Some expensive service options include the possibility of providing food in any quantity and at any time.
Leisure activities
Catering facilities included in the tourist infrastructure are called upon to fulfill not only their direct function regarding the preparation of dishes. They should also provide an opportunity for visitors to have fun while receiving 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
In the tourism business, there are companies that organize travel arrangements for travelers. These are tour operators and travel agents.
The first of them are legal entities or individual entrepreneurs whose activities are associated with the formation, promotion and implementation of the final product in this area. They form tours, making up an orderly and interconnected by time, consistent sequence of services and work in terms of quality and cost. In this case, conclusion of contracts for reservation of seats, their reservation and provision is made. 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 implementation of the final product of the sphere in question. Such a company acquires the tours developed by the tour operator and sells them to the consumer.
At the same time, the fare is added to the proposed product from the place where the group will be formed, to the first hotel or other place of accommodation, as well as from the last point of the route back.
Transport infrastructure
Its facilities are one of the components of the tourism industry. Transport tourist infrastructure is a set of transport organizations that deal with the transport of travelers.
The existing system in each country is formed using the following:
- animals - dogs, donkeys, horses, camels, elephants;
- mechanical ground means - bicycles, cars, buses, trains;
- airborne vehicles;
- water transport - boats, rafts, sea and river surface ships.
Based on the stages of the work performed, there are:
- transfer, representing the delivery of tourists to the hotel from the station or airport terminal and likewise back at the end of the tour;
- transportation to the destination over long distances;
- transportation during the execution of railway and bus tours;
- freight 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 vehicles.