Geography of Tourism of Ukraine

Abstract

In the last decade, the tourist movement in Ukraine has shown different trends—from growth to reduction in the number of visits. This was due to economic reasons (global financial crisis), as well as social and political reasons (annexation of Crimea, military aggression in the east of Ukraine). In particular, over the past 15 years Ukraine has shown both an increase in international tourist flows (from 6.5 million people in 2000 to 25 million people in 2005) and at intervals their sharp decrease to 20 million people in 2009–2010 and 12.7 million people in 2014. In the period of 2000–2014, the outbound tourism in Ukraine has shown a continuous growth: in 2000–2009, 13–15 million people annually went abroad, and in 2010–2011, 17 and 19 million people respectively, while in the period of 2012–2014, their number ranged from 21 to 23.7 million people. The development of traditional types of tourism and recreation activities (ski, sea vacations, recreational holidays) and the new ones (rural tourism, ecotourism, geotourism, gastronomic tourism) has been observed. Their main centres possess basic and supporting infrastructure and carry out appropriate information and marketing policy to attract domestic and international tourists. Within Ukraine, there are four existing recreational and tourist regions based on resource, infrastructure and economic and spatial criteria; they are as follows: the Carpathian, Crimea, the Azov-Black Sea and the Dnieper regions. Such regions as Polissia in the north of the country, Volyn-Podolsk in the west and Slobozhansk-Donetsk in the east are now forming their regional tourist and recreational facilities.