SPORTS AND EVENTS TOURISM: DEFINITION AND POTENTIAL OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE KHARKIV REGION

Diversification of tourist demand leads to the isolation of new types of tourism, which have their own resource base and a fairly solvent and constant contingent of consumers. One of such modern types of tourism is sports and event tourism. Having a sufficiently developed resource base for the development of this type of tourism, both Ukraine in general and Kharkiv region in particular do not yet occupy a prominent place in the structure of tourist flows in this area, although they have some achievements in world and European sporting events. Such circumstances require research of the situation and finding solutions for the development of sports and event tourism in the region. The research of the essence of sports and event tourism conducted in the article allowed to separate it from sports and health and sports professional tourism. The author's definition of this type of tourism is given in the article. The analysis of the resource base of sports and event tourism in Kharkiv showed the presence of many different components, including stadiums, swimming pools, ice arenas, golf club, equestrian schools, sports schools and organizations, developed a modern sports logo of the city. It is determined that sports and event tourism is a promising independent powerful direction of development of both domestic and international tourism for the city. For more effective development of this area, it is proposed to develop a strategy, for which three main components are identified, as well as promising areas for improving the tourism development program and consolidating the efforts of interested stakeholders — administration, sports infrastructure owner, tourism enterprises.