On the tourist space accessibility evaluation for families with preschool children

The modern tourism industry experiences rapid development and involves more and more diverse segments of tourism services consumers of, including small children. As a rule, children are key part of a family tourist group, and their interests influence significantly the choice a place and format for recreation. Therefore, an increasing number of tourist attractions and destinations are becoming child-friendly, adapting to the needs of the children’s audience. However, on closer examination, many objects of the tourism industry, even those that are directly created for children’s recreation, have several accessibility problems for tourist with little children. This puts us in front of the question: what qualities of the tourist facility environment (attraction, tourist center of any level) make it child-friendly? Therefore, the article is aimed at identifying the parameters and studying approaches to understanding and evaluating the environment accessibility for children and tourists with little children. Based on the existing approaches to evaluating the environment accessibility and using feedback on most popular in Russian tourists objects, we have identified a number of parameters that must be taken into account when assessing the tourist places for the needs of visitors with children, primarily under 6 years old. We grouped all indicators according to the types of accessibility: informational, architectural and planning, socio-cultural, regulatory, transport, financial, etc. The research results are the basis for the further developing an integrated and comprehensive methodology for assessing the tourist environment accessibility for tourists with small children.