The tourist infrastructure of local communities in Ukraine: current state and impact on local economic development

Purpose. The purpose of our work is to investigate the presence of tourist infrastructure elements to ensure a comfortable stay of tourists in tourist destinations, which can become a driver of the development of local communities, especially in rural areas; investigation of financial support for tourism development by local governments. A derivative task of our study is to identify challenges and prospects of tourism infrastructure in tourist destinations after the pandemic. Methodology / approach. The theoretical basis of the study is the fundamental principles of economics and the scientific research of Ukrainian and foreign scientists. For the analysis, we used data from the official web resources of local governments of Ukrainian local communities with tourist potential, information from the Booking.com and the Internet about tourist facilities and events in local communities. During the research we used the following methods: analytical (to select tourist destinations for analysis, their grouping and analysis of their tourist infrastructure); comparison (to compare the tourist infrastructure in the local communities that were the object of our study); synthesis (to conclude the general state of tourist infrastructure in tourist destinations and prospects for its development in the future), graphic (for visualization of study results). Results. The study highlights five elements of tourist infrastructure of the most popular tourist destinations in Ukraine: travel services, transportation services, accommodation services for temporary residence, catering services, services for the organization of recreation and entertainment. We analysed the state of functioning of the tourist infrastructure in the tourist destinations of Ukraine before the introduction of lockdown. The results of the analysis showed that only four out of five elements of the tourist infrastructure were at the proper level. We described the challenges of the tourism industry, which had arisen as a result of the epidemic. In conclusion, we considered the prospects for the attitude and development of tourist infrastructure in the local communities of Ukraine after the pandemic. Originality / scientific novelty. During the study for the first time, we selected the most popular tourist destinations in Ukraine which in 2019 received the highest revenues from tourist tax as an indicator of the official stay of tourists, we grouped them according to their dominant type of tourism and researched their tourist infrastructure. We compared the revenues from the tourist tax with the expenditures of local communities for the development of tourism and found that local communities received much more money from the tourist tax than they had spent on the development and promotion of tourism. Practical value / implications. We show the characteristic features of the development of the tourism sector in the post-quarantine period, which can be used by local governments and businesses of tourist destinations when planning the development of tourist infrastructure.