TOURISM CLUSTER LOCATION ANALYSIS IN THE SOUTHERN PART OF PRIMORSKY KRAI

Tourism industry operations are affected by many overarching issues, such as maintaining the balance between the under-visited and the over-visited attractions. Tourism is among the most important sources of income in Primorsky Krai regional budget. This study is aimed at proposing a scientific approach to recreational zoning of coastal areas based on the assessment of urbanization, digitalization and availability of touristic infrastructure. Several municipalities located in the southern part of Primorsky Krai have been selected for the analysis. It was found that touristic infrastructure favors heavil y urbanized and densely populated areas, usually in close proximity to the shoreline. It was concluded that the results of tourism cluster analysis do not always coincide with the territorial planning documentation. The relationship between the tourism industry operations and the possibility for adoption of information and communication technologies in the study area was assessed using the cellular network coverages. The results presented indicate that the tourism industry potential in Primorsk y Krai is unevenly distributed across the study region, thus challenging the balance of overtourism and undertourism. However, the more disadvantaged areas are potentially able to expand upon the existing infrastructure and attract more tourist traffic . Therefore, the tourism sector in the study area indeed has the possibility to create several attractive tourist clusters to evenly distribute the tourist flows.