The functional significance and place of tourist legends in creating attractive destination properties

The paper proposes the concept of substantiation for the notion of “tourist legend” and describes its place in the modern tourist and sightseeing industry. Tourist legends are important intangible resources, attracting tourists even in those cities where “nothing to see and nothing to show”. Tourist legends are an integral part of the tourist areas in terms of branding, attracting tourists and creating a positive tourist image for individual cities and entire countries. Despite the long tradition of using tourist legends in recreational areas, in theory this subject remains poorly understood. Therefore, this article represents a theoretical generalization, which results in a definition of the concept of “tourist legend”, marks its basic properties: a plot and tourist excursion value, territorial binding to a tourist site (area), the implementation of social and tourist functions (attractant, didactic, motivational, information, entertainment, warning) and a positive influence on the formation of geographical and tourist cognitive and attractive images of a territory. All variety of tourist legends can be classified according to the principles of: case-with a plot (or style of presentation), chronological, territorial, ethnic, cultural and social, the object of “legend creation” degree of reliability and autochthonous. The article presents the classification scheme of tourist legends which describes various groups and gives examples from world practice. The paper describes the experience of studying tourism legends and creating a tourist guide for the city of Dnepropetrovsk, which is selected as an example of a typical post-Soviet industrial center with an underdeveloped tourism industry and a significant tourist and recreational potential.