Tourism Geography: the state, vectors and current trends in the XXI century

Abstract

Geography operates a powerful arsenal of methodological analysis and synthesis of spatial phenomena and processes based on established natural and social organization geospace, so is able to provide the most thorough scientific interpretation of the phenomenon of tourism. A separate direction of the scientific studies – geography of tourism was formed in geographical science. A systematic study of geographical science recreation and tourism is the first half of the twentieth century. During this time a significant number of original conceptual and theoretical and methodological approaches and areas of study of the geographical aspects of leisure person were drafted. The critical review of the current state of tourism geography, the latest achievements of the leading scientific schools of tourism geography are highlighted. Now the spectrum of studies on the tourism geography covers all manifestations and processes of deployment of hundreds of varieties of leisure and social activity in space. For example, the studios of tourism geography have recently gained ground. Such directions of the world geography as the “wine tourism geography”, “geography of SPA-tourism” and so on, that are exotic for the geographers of Ukraine, gain the further specification with appearing dozens of new articles and a number of individual books. Ukrainian school presented a rather limited number of scientists and publications among the national European schools of the tourism geography. Main bunch of scientists, who develop provisions of the tourism geography, is concentrated in Kyiv. Scientists, representing regional geographic centres of science and education, make a great contribution to the formation of Ukrainian national school of the tourism geography. Considerable (but, unfortunately, mentioned and quoted outside Ukraine) achievements in the field of the tourism geography today were made by scientists from Lviv, Uzhgorod, Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ternopil, Nizhyn, Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa. The current level of tourism geography in Ukraine is outlined; its object, subject, links with other relevant sciences and actual areas of subject differentiation are formulated. Key words: tourism geography, object, subject, vectors and trends of development.