The goals of “green” clusters in tourism

Tourist clusters are widely used in domestic practice as tools for the development of tourist infrastructure and improving the competitiveness of tourist products. The strategic effectiveness of clusters is determined by the extent to which the goals of their formation and functioning take into account the trends in the development of national and global tourism, as well as the interests of global, national and local stakeholders. Environmental challenges, transforming the system of socio-ecological and economic interests of stakeholders, require a corresponding adjustment of goals and goal-setting procedures at all stages of the cluster life cycle. The article substantiates the need for greening the goals system of cluster initiatives as a key condition and the first step in the system of measures for the “green” reorientation of existing and emerging clusters; offers a definition of a “green” tourism cluster as an organizational mechanism for greening the tourism industry, as well as a set of joint goals of its participants, which allows us to reach a compromise between the mission of greening tourism activities and the commercial success of the cluster. Data from the Russian and European Cluster Observatories, the European Cluster Collaboration Platform, and the TCI Network, a global network on clusters, innovation, and competitiveness for the period from 2003 to the present, are the information base for the study of the goals of cluster initiatives.