Typology of tourism clusters, included in federal target program «Development of inbound and domestic tourism in the Russian Federation»

The article deals with the problems of the relevance of the tourism clusters typology, which are created in Russia in the framework of the Federal target program «development of inbound and domestic tourism in the Russian Federation» (2011-2018). Totally, there are 95 tourism clusters involved in two stages of the program. They differ in many parame- ters against each other. Such a large number of different objects that are created with a common purpose, actualizes the task of obtaining specific and general their characteristics and estimations, requires an assessment of their development potential. All of this can be done on the basis of the classification method. The article is focused on the development of an integrated classification (typology) and the definition of integrated types of tourism clusters in Russia. Author proposes to consider a type of tourism clusters as combination of them, in which the members of one or another type of clusters have similar features in common. These features appear in the unity of patterns and trends, basing on the same economic (production) relations, combination of general and specific (class) aspects of their essence, a similar level of economic and other forms of development. The article proposes 7 indicators of clusters typology, each of which is esti- mated in points (balls) according to four criteria: 1) position relative to the generation centers of tourist flows - to the nearest «cities with a million-plus population»; 2) cluster lifecycle stage; 3) the variety of types of tourist attractors and / or cluster nucleuses; 4) spatial structure of the cluster members; 5) target groups of consumers; 6) method of forming or establishment; 7) information availability of cluster for actual and potential customers.