Competitive advantages of city parks as a recreation place for Barnaul residents

The paper analyzes the features of competitive advantages of parks in the city of Barnaul, Altai Krai, and creates recommendations for their further development. It also defines the prospects for the development of recreation options for city residents in ten parks in Barnaul, and identifies and analyzes their competitive advantages using benchmarking. The main elements of leisure in parks, opportunities for recreation and recuperation of city residents are considered. Recommendations are given for improving service and developing tourist infrastructure in the parks of the city of Barnaul, and events aimed at their promotion are proposed. The results of a study of the current state of city parks are presented, an overview of existing service components is conducted – attractions, equipment rental, catering services, events. A comparative analysis of parks according to 25 criteria is also performed, which showed that at the moment the Emerald Park is the most competitive, and the Yubileiny Park is the least competitive, since it is still under reconstruction, so it will increase the number of its competitive advantages after the completion of the repair. Nagorny Park has a large number of competitive advantages, but it is less than that of Izumrudny Park, in addition, some objects, due to the geographical features of the area, are located only on the Ob embankment. A benchmark analysis of the competitive advantages of city parks providing entertainment services and active recreation was carried out, from the results obtained, it was revealed that at the moment the most competitive park is “Arlekino”, and the smallest number of competitive advantages has the park “Edelweiss”, as it is outdated and needs to be updated. Central Park, Zoo “Lesnaya Skazka”, Park “Solnechny Veter” and Sports Park named after Alexey Smertin are approximately at the same level of competitiveness. Thanks to the benchmark analysis, a conclusion was made which parks are the most competitive, what competitive advantages they have, as well as what is missing in this or that park and recommendations are given for improving the service in these parks, promoting and developing further opportunities.