Methodological aspects of risk and strategic benefits of tourism development assessment in municipalities

The article examines the questions of informational and methodological support of the assessment procedures and analysis of the benefits and risks of tourism development at the municipal level. There was proposed a method for evaluating the complex risk of tourism industry in the settlements of the municipality on the basis of expert procedures. Expert data on four aspects of the existence of risks and strategic benefits in the settlements was described on the example of one of the districts of the Moscow region: the first aspect is motivational characteristics of the local population and local leaders; human resources and opportunities for training of tourism personnel, infrastructure indicators of the tourism industry, regulatory support for the management of the tourist industry; the second one is environmental factors that affect tourism and recreational activities, and opportunities of the health care system for servicing tourists; the third aspect is municipal factors associated with the development of roads and transport, territorial disparities in the level and quality of life of the population, the costs of tourism infrastructure; and the fourth one is the possibility of development of settlements in connection with the development of their tourism potential, interregional ties and geographical position. Quantitative indicators for the complex potential benefits and risks of comprehensive development of tourism were introduced, grounded and experimentally tested on the example of settlements in the studied area. The analysis of the qualitative opinions of experts about the benefits and risks in the settlements of the district was made as an additional argument of summary quantitative findings. This allowed a more detailed dive into the problems of specific territories and their specialties of the development in tourism activities