ORGANIZATION OF TOURIST TRIPS BY DOMESTIC TOUR OPERATORS UNDER MARTIAL LAW: CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS

Abstract

The war had a negative impact on the activities of domestic tour operators in the organization of international and domestic tourism trips. In this regard, the country's tourism industry has experienced serious stress, financial and personnel losses. Therefore, the optimization of domestic tour operating activities, its adequate response to the challenges of the post-war era is an urgent task for the professional community of the tourism industry of Ukraine. The purpose of the study is to highlight the areas of effective operational work of the domestic tour operator in order to form ways of optimizing the activity of the tourist business in the organization of tourist trips under the conditions of unfavorable external factors in which Ukrainian tourism is forced to function. The article is based on the structural-activity and informational approaches to the analysis of the object and the subject of research, which is widely spread in modern scientific developments. The 3 mentioned methods make it possible to comprehensively investigate the current state of the tourism industry, to establish cause-and-effect relationships of the emergence of problems and to determine the directions of further work of tour operating in the conditions of prolonged military aggression. The results presented in the study make it possible to reach the following conclusions: domestic tour operating has partially resumed its activities, despite the unfavorable conditions for its work. The main factor contributing to this process was the flexibility of the operational activities of the participants of the tourist market, which manifested itself in the minimization of costs, optimization of the marketing promotion of the tourist product, the creation of new logistics models and the gradual exit of the country's tour operators to the tourist market of the European Union countries, etc. The Ukrainian tourism industry, perhaps the first in the world, demonstrates the experience of sustainability in striving to implement its tasks, developing specific operational and functional cases. They need further research and generalization. The study puts forward a number of professional and well-considered proposals regarding the further directions of the tour operating business in the organization of tourist trips, and is an adequate response to the challenges of wartime.