The tourism industry in Russia: Problems of public administration

Abstract

The paper examines national methods for regulating the Russian tourism industry and uses the case study of the Federal target-oriented program “The Development of Domestic and Inbound Tourism in the Russian Federation (2011–2018)”. The methodological basis relies on the provisions of the theory and practice of management by objectives in the public sector. During the study, the authors apply a wide spectrum of quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, as well as the retrospective, structural-functional and system-based approaches. We attempt to evaluate the progress and preliminary results of the implementation of the Program based on state statistics and the data provided by the Federal Treasury and the Federal Agency for Tourism. The results obtained show that the Program’s initial performance indicators were inflated and later subject to repeated revision. The authors conclude that the method for the Program’s efficiency’s evaluation uses indicators that do not correlate with each other; for example, investment in fixed assets is an indicator representing an outdated and cost-intensive approach to performance evaluation. The study proves that due to violations of the algorithms of economic calculations, the method for evaluating socio-economic efficiency proposed in the Program is inapplicable. We deduce that the Program is sketchy and poorly developed and it is necessary to involve academic and practical experts to introduce legislation in the field of planning and assessing large-scale events. It is of importance to undertake further research on developing methods for evaluating social and multiplicative effects in the tourism industry, to improve economic measurement methods in this integrated economic area and evaluate the performance of the Program at the end of 2018.

Keywords

• TOURISM INDUSTRY
• GOVERNMENT PROGRAM
• PRODUCTIVITY
• EFFICIENCY EVALUATION
• PROJECT