Best practice approaches in tourism strategy development

The vast majority of tourism destinations at all hierarchical levels adopt and carry out tourism development strategies. These strategies are based on general principles (program-targeted management, public-private partnership, segmentation of the consumer market, taking into account factors of the internal and external environment, etc.), however, the approaches that are implemented, the goals and objectives, the structure of documents, and so on, differ greatly. The study was conducted in different countries and regions of the world for more than 20 years. The author operated by the set of methods, including expedition and expert interviews. The study is based on the primary source documents, mainly tourism legislation and regulations, as well as official statistics. The author revealed that tourism development strategy is effective if it corresponds to a stage in the tourist destination life cycle. The article presents the results of the comparative analysis of strategies (concepts) for tourism development. The author considers strategies for tourism development in emerging tourism destinations (Saudi Arabia), growing ones (Turkey), mature ones (Great Britain), and problematic ones (Barcelona region). It is important to take into account the world experience and apply it creatively in Russian realities. Based on the research results the author wrote a textbook dedicated to tourism development strategies in countries and regions of the world (Moscow: KnoRus, 2020).