Cluster approach in tourism

Today the development vector of Russia has the easterly direction. In this regard in Siberian and Far East regions tourist resources are actively searched and created. In the first half of the 2010th tourist reference points were turned to the Caucasus, and at the end of 2014 it was decided to suspend a half of alpine skiing projects of "Kurorty Severnogo Kavkaza" JSC. Many of them had no the anchor investor simply, so the project implementation was not possible without it. Accession of tourist attractive Crimea locating not so far from the Russian Caucasus also played its role.

At the same time the "eastern ring of Russia" in the east was created that is urged to unite regions of Transbaikalia and the Far East. Thus, the idea of "tourist Mecca" moved from the South to the east. It is curious that almost all regions of the Far East decided to develop the cluster format.

Cluster approach is the most popular today. The term "cluster" is taken from English and is literally translated as "grow together". Clusters appeared at the end of the XX century as the effective competitiveness improvement tool.

The founder of this approach — Michael Porter — defined a cluster as "a group of geographically localized interconnected companies supplying the equipment, accessories, specialized services, infrastructure, research institutes, higher education institutions and other organizations supplementing each other and strengthening competitive advantages of separate companies and the cluster in general" [1]. Thus, the level of economy development and life of the population depends on the level of clusters development in the country.

In the Far East clusters were apprehended as the development panacea almost. In Primorsk territory six tourist clusters are created today. Initiators of tourist clusters count mainly on the budgetary funding and on private investments partially. In this regard there is a need of participation in federal competitions that demands the preparation of an accredited application, justification of the project efficiency from the participants. And efficiency of the project, in its turn, will depend on tourists flow.

Next and the most perspective Far Eastern tourists are the Chinese, in smaller degree — the Japanese and Koreans. According to Rostourism, during January-September, 2014 the number of Chinese tourists visited Russia made 358 thousand, and as a result China became the largest supplier of foreign tourists during this period. Germany ranked second (319 thousand tourists), the USA (150 thousand) - third.

In order to attract Asian tourists, Russian tourist clusters have to be well informed on their preferences. For example:

• Chinese tourists are focused on informative tourism (about 40%) more than Korean and Japanese;
• one in three traveler from China goes abroad for the sake of rest, while among Japanese and Koreans - one in four;
• hopping attracts 10% of tourists from China;
• friends and relatives visit during trips to another country is characteristic for 9,8% of Koreans.

At the same time many tourist clusters of the Far Eastern federal district lay high hopes for the game zone in Artyom city which is predicted to get about 5 million tourists by 2018 and about 8 million — by 2022. These are huge figures for the Far Eastern federal district, however it is not absolutely clear yet whether the "players" and members of their families coming there will be able to make the target audience of the tourist clusters.

Within the frame of the tourist and recreation cluster concept development at the initial stage it becomes clear what number of tourists can visit this or that cluster and how efficient it would be.

 

[1] Porter M. Competition / Transl. from English — M.: Publishing House «Williams», 2006.