Tourism industry development issues in the Arctic zone of the Russian Federation

The article summarizes the existing approaches to assessing the level of tourism at the local level. It allowed forming a system of key indicators and indicators of the tourism industry activity in the development of the hotel business; the development of tourism business; profitability of tourism and hospitality; the popularity of regional tourism products. Based on the formed system of indicators, the author's technique of a point estimation of development activity for the tourist branch was developed. As a result of testing of the proposed methodology in the Russian Arctic, we could reveal that the weaknesses of the Arctic territories was the low popularity of the local tourist products and low growth yield of the tourism industry, especially among the areas wholly included in the Russian Arctic. The conclusions are consistent with the results of an expert survey of participants of the tourism and recreational cluster of the Murmansk Oblast. A set of measures aimed at the development of the tourism industry of the Murmansk Oblast is proposed: the recognition of tourism as a subsidized industry at the level of the Oblast and its municipalities; consolidation in strategic and program documents of the territory on the formation of the local tourist brand, advertising, and information support of the local tourist product promotion on the internal and external markets; a campaign on the promotion of a positive tourist image of the Murmansk Oblast in mass media.