Virtual tourism as an innovative direction of socio-economic activity of the region

The tourism development is impossible without the innovations that have a high commercial and social impact on the business environment and the population. One of the directions is the creation of new types of tourism, in particular virtual, the emergence of which is naturally due to the increasing influence of scientific and technological progress and the digital economic environment. The research is focused on virtual tourism as an innovative direction in the industry development, namely on the conditions and factors of successful development of virtual tourism as a process. The article is aimed at elaboration a process approach to the formation of virtual tourism in the socio-economic space of the region. The author considers the role and value of virtual tourism for the subjects of tourist and recreational services market. The article describes the evolution and approaches to assessing this type of socio-economic and cultural activity. The result of the work is the author’s definition of virtual tourism and various functional areas of its implementation in the tourist and recreational services market of depending on the specialization of economic agents. The author presents a model of a process approach to the virtual tourism development in the economic system of the region. The article describes in detail factors determining the direction of an innovative type of activity, including strategies for working with the main groups of consumers. It is determined that virtual tourism development can be considered in two directions-services and the digital environment, that is, enterprises. Virtual travel companies allow significantly reducing the cost of organizing tourist tours and provide opportunities for users that were not available before. Traditional enterprises are becoming inefficient in the era of globalization. Within a virtual enterprise, it is possible to ensure a direct relationship between customers and manufacturers of goods and services. The directions of future research are related to the developing methodological approaches to assessing the socio-economic effect of the virtual tourism evolution in the market environment of the region.