TOURIST PRODUCT AS A COMBINATION OF TOURIST SERVICES

The work examines the historical process of evolving tourism and its development. Historical figures (James Cook and Thomas Cook, closely associated with traveling), who have made a huge contribution to the development of tourism, and have brought significant changes to the modern tourism industry, are presented. The first tourist route was developed by Thomas Cook in 1841, including the purpose of the trip, place, time, duration, organized meals. The article also discusses the components of the tourism product, such as: tourism work, travel services and travel goods. The authors of the work analyzed various definitions of a tourist product, on the basis of which the author’s concept of a “tourist product” was given. In the course of the study, the sources of the tourist product were identified: 1) the system of knowledge, technologies, services in tourism, which accelerate the process of servicing tourists many times over, increasing the quality of the provided tourist services and products; 2) natural resources that form the basis for the formation of a tourist product; 3) the organizational and legal structure of the enterprise, in most cases, in tourism organizations, the linear-functional management structure. The consumer properties of a tourist product (hospitality, usefulness, validity, flexibility, reliability, ease of use, efficiency, clarity, integrity) are considered and their detailed analysis is carried out. In the process of development, a tourist product successively goes through certain stages that form the life cycle of a tourist product. The study analyzes each stage of the tourist product life cycle and identifies their features. The authors present a tourist product as a combination of tourist services and consider three levels which a tourist product passes through during its life cycle.