Independent tourism in modern conditions. Independent and individual tourism - what is important to know about it Search for information

Country selection

Choosing a place to travel is a purely individual thing; I usually focus on several points when choosing a country for a new trip. Firstly, it is desirable that it be a new country for me or a place where I have never been before, and secondly, you need to think about what you can do there, what attractions there are or what you can do there (I prefer leisure), and thirdly, you need to pay attention to various promotions from airlines, when the price of tickets to a certain place can be very profitable. Sometimes the choice of country happens completely by accident: friends might invite you, or you might get caught cheap ticket on a plane or I can read some interesting book about this country, there can be countless reasons, for me it doesn’t really matter where to fly, the main thing is that it is interesting. With basic information about different countries we can find it on the website.

Search for a flight ticket

The next step after choosing a destination is to find a suitable and preferably cheap air ticket. First of all, you need to check whether discount airlines (low-cost airlines) fly in the chosen direction, for example, in Asia it is AirAsia, and in Europe Ryanair, such companies usually offer the cheapest flights, but this is not profitable in all cases. After checking budget airlines, you must definitely search for air tickets on regular airlines; it is impossible to check all airlines, so it is better to use aggregator search engines that collect price information from many airlines and air ticket sales agencies and provide it in a convenient form. With the help of such air ticket search engines, it is very easy to find the cheapest options (offers are sorted by price) on the desired route. There are several such search engines and for the most part they all have similar functionality, but I am used to using them and have been searching and buying tickets through them for 3 years now. Search cheap air ticket It’s very simple, just enter the destination we need and select the flight dates. (You can check out detailed instructions About, ). Promotions and promotions are also published on the website. Special offers from airlines - this is very convenient for those who have not yet decided where they want to travel. Sometimes you can fly to Europe for 5,000 rubles with all round-trip fees due to the promotion of some airline.

I’ve been buying air tickets exclusively on the Internet for 4 years now - it’s much simpler and more convenient, the whole purchasing process takes no more than 5 minutes and you don’t have to go anywhere. During this time, I bought hundreds of air tickets via the Internet and never had any problems with it. To purchase you only need bank card, which you can pay on the Internet.

Another tip for those who do not live in Moscow or St. Petersburg - check the price of an air ticket with departure (arrival) from Moscow (or other cities closest to you major cities), it may turn out to be much cheaper.

If you are looking for a flight ticket to a popular tourist destination, you can also check last minute flight deals on charter flights, this can be done for example.

Hotel search and selection

Different hotel booking sites work differently, some offer to pay for the hotel immediately, while others book without advance payment, but must be paid directly upon check-in. The first option gives more guarantees that the room will be booked for you, and the second In this case, it is easier to cancel the reservation.

The process of searching and booking hotels is similar to searching for air tickets; the main difficulty is finding the most suitable option (in the case of hotels, reviews can help with this).

Getting a visa on your own

There are 130 countries in the world where Russians do not need a visa or a visa is issued upon arrival - that’s more than half the world! (With full list visa-free countries can be found on Wikipedia)

At the same time, there are countries that are of great interest to travelers, but where you need to get a visa (USA, Europe, China, etc.), but the process of obtaining a visa is much simpler than it seems at first glance or as they want to present it travel agencies. I independently obtained visas to the USA (2 times), Europe (France), China, Myanmar, and in no case was there a need to contact a travel agency. All the work of travel agencies consists of sending documents to Visa Center and for this they charge quite a lot of money. When I needed a visa to France, I saw offers from travel agencies that reached up to 500-600 euros for help in obtaining a visa, this is just robbery! I collected it myself Required documents and went to the France visa center in Moscow. After 3 days I received a ready-made Schengen visa, it cost me 70 euros (35 euros consular fee and 35 euros for visa center services). You can contact the consulate directly, then obtaining a visa will take longer, but you can save 35 euros.

The process of obtaining a visa is very simple and is described on the websites of the embassies (or consulates) of the respective country. All you need is to find the website of the embassy (or the visa center closest to you, if there is one), look at it for the list of documents required to obtain a visa and make an appointment (if necessary). Most often, to obtain a visa, a passport, air tickets, hotel reservations and insurance are enough. After that, you just need to submit your documents and wait for them to give you a visa. There's nothing complicated about it. It is especially easy to obtain a Schengen visa on your own, given that many new visa centers for European countries have recently opened throughout the country.

It is worth noting that in some countries (such as Japan) it is much more difficult to obtain a visa without the services of travel agencies, so in this case, contacting a travel company may be justified.

Language problem

One of the main problems that stops people from traveling independently is insufficient knowledge of English (de facto English is the international language). But it seems to me that most people overestimate the significance of this problem. Yes, not knowing English can make your trip a little more difficult, but it cannot make traveling on your own impossible. I have been to places where the local population did not speak English language and then I had to explain myself with gestures - this is of course more difficult, but this makes it even more interesting. In Thailand, I often saw Russian tourists who came to relax on a tourist package and do not speak English at all, but these tourists walk around the city perfectly, buy fruit at local markets, while they speak Russian, and the Thais answer them in Thai , and everyone understands each other perfectly. Sign language is a very universal language and can explain almost everything. I will give two more examples from my experience. In China I once met an Irishman who was planning to travel from Irkutsk to Moscow in reserved seat carriage During our meeting, he learned five Russian words - that's all he knew in Russian. And another time, in a train compartment, I met a Swiss man who was traveling to Tobolsk alone, not only did he speak English very poorly (but in Russia, knowing English can be of little help to a foreigner, especially in the provinces), he didn’t speak at all in Russian, but this did not stop him from traveling from Moscow to Beijing by train, stopping in many Russian cities and exploring them on his own. Upon returning to Switzerland, he wrote to me that he really enjoyed this trip and was simply delighted.

There is no language problem - there is only fear of this problem.

Search for information. What to do and what to visit.

If you prefer to go on excursions in an organized manner, then on most popular tourist destinations Such excursions can be booked on the spot from local companies (with a Russian-speaking guide); most often, it will be cheaper than booking excursions from the travel company where you bought the ticket. In countries such as Egypt, Thailand, Türkiye, there are many local companies that will be happy to organize for you excursion program, but I would suggest driving through the sights on your own, for this you just need to arm yourself with a guidebook.

But I would recommend hiring a local guide yourself for individual excursion, it may be a little more expensive than a group excursion, but you will get personalized service and probably a very interesting experience. Programs from self-guided are often more exclusive and will allow you to visit places you might never see on your own or with a group. There are several websites where you can find and book excursions from independent local guides, I recommend the Russian site, which has already proven itself to be good.

Travel insurance and safety

Purchasing a ticket from a travel agency provides absolutely no guarantees of safety. Your peace of mind is only in your hands, and the travel agency cannot provide any additional security. Most accidents happen to those who come on an organized tour, as they get a false sense of security and lose their vigilance.

When traveling abroad, always take out travel insurance, it can be done quickly and inexpensively (less than $1 per day). To obtain a visa to Europe (Schengen visa) and many other visa countries, the purchase of insurance is required. You can get an insurance policy from almost any insurance company or, even easier, you can get insurance online. You can compare offers from insurance companies and apply for insurance online on the website, where you can choose the most profitable proposition from the largest insurance companies (you can find more detailed instructions on choosing and purchasing insurance in the article -). An electronic insurance policy has the same legal force as a paper policy. If you have an insurance policy, in the event of an accident, you will need to call the phone number indicated in the policy and they will give you all the instructions on what to do next, and if necessary, call a doctor. Take care of your safety yourself, no one will do it but you.

What are the advantages of independent travel compared to tour packages?

The main advantages of independent travel are freedom and low cost. You are in complete control of your journey, you go where you want, and not where your guide tells you. You don't have to live in the same place for the entire holiday; if you want to move to another place or hotel, you can easily do so. When traveling on your own, you will never find yourself in a situation where your tour company goes bankrupt and does not pay for your hotel stay. I think everyone remembers when hundreds of tourists around the world could not return home and were not allowed out of hotels, demanding to pay for their accommodation - with independent tourism this is basically impossible, since only you control everything.

Traveling on your own is cheap, the price of your trip depends only on you and your preferences. You don't have to pay for unnecessary services travel companies, you can always choose the best offer. Let's compare the cost of independent travel and a tour package using a specific example. Let's take one of the most popular destinations - the resort of Pattaya (Thailand) and the largest tour operator TezTour. Let's say we want to go to Pattaya in early November for 7 days (departure on November 6th), one of the tour company's offers includes a flight from Moscow, transfer and 7 nights at the WELCOME PLAZA 3 * hotel with breakfast, the price for this tour package is 68,086 rubles for 2 people. Now let's see how much it would cost if we went on our own. We go to the website and look for a Moscow-Bangkok flight with a departure in early November for 2 people, as a result we get a price of 42,880 rubles for two. Then we look for a hotel on the website, enter the name Welcome Plaza and the dates in early November into the search bar, and we get a price of 9,035 rubles for 7 nights for double occupancy. A bus from Bangkok airport to Pattaya costs about 100 rubles per person. Thus, the total cost of the trip when planning independently is 52,115 rubles, which is 15,971 rubles cheaper than the tour package offered by the travel agency. It's simple math, it's up to you to decide.

Or, for example, one more popular destination- Cuba. At the beginning of October (departure 10/2/12), a package with flights, transfers and accommodation at the Vedado 3* hotel (reviews about the hotel, by the way, are not very good, but you won’t have a chance to change it) from TezTour costs 113,256 rubles for two. If we conduct a search, as we did above, we will find that the Moscow-Havana-Moscow flight for these dates costs 72,381 rubles, and the same hotel for 7 nights costs 11,311 rubles, which gives a total of 83,692 rubles, and this almost 30,000 rubles less than the tour company’s offer.

And if you take a non-standard route, which can be organized very easily if you plan it yourself, then purchasing it from a travel agency can be many times more expensive.

In rare cases, it happens that there are no inexpensive air tickets for a particular destination, and then it turns out that using a tourist package may be more profitable. But this happens quite rarely, and over time it will become even less common, especially given the fact that this year tour operators have significantly increased the cost of tourist packages against the backdrop of bankruptcies of large travel companies and an increase in the dollar exchange rate.

In fact, you pay travel agencies for the following services:

Flight. Often old planes with poor maintenance, but you can't change anything and choose an airline.
Hotel. You won't be able to change the hotel if you don't like it or want to go somewhere else.
Transfer from the airport to the hotel by shared bus.
Visa. If the country requires a visa (and there are not many of them), then they will collect your documents and send them to a visa center, but they cannot guarantee the successful receipt of a visa.
Excursions. You may be offered excursions, but the price for them will be many times higher than if you went to the same places on your own or through local excursion bureaus.

This is where the services of tour operators end. No one will help you communicate in a store or market if you don’t know the language, you shouldn’t expect help from a guide, if you have an accident, they are not obliged to help you, this is not included in the list of their services. Really, after reading this article, you won’t be able to organize your trip yourself, making it cheaper and more interesting?

If I still haven’t convinced you that it’s better to travel on your own, and you still intend to go on vacation with a package, then I recommend that you read the instructions - “”, so as not to waste time on trips to travel agencies, but to easily and conveniently find and book everything online.

Conclusion

The most difficult thing is to take the first step, but you only have to go somewhere on your own once and you will never want to buy packages again. organized tours. Don’t put it off for later, start planning your next trip on your own and you will see that it is much easier, cheaper and more interesting than it seems at first glance.

PS: If you have any questions or want to clarify something, ask in the comments, it is important for us to know whether this material was useful and how it could be supplemented. Share this article with your friends via social networks, let them also find out how easy it is to travel abroad on your own.

Every experienced traveler will say that there is nothing complicated in planning your next trip. But for a beginner, this task may seem not so much difficult as new and frightening. After all, the success of the entire journey largely depends on preparation. Logistics, accommodation, on-site programs, country specifics, local prices and the “right” places to shop are just a small part of what needs to be found and implemented. And for this, we have collected useful resources and services that can be useful at the initial stage of real travel.

I don’t know what will force me to buy a ready-made trip from a tour operator now (except for a super unrealistic price that will cover the costs of flights and accommodation), because planning an independent trip is easy and simple. Often the trip turns out, if not cheaper, then much richer and more interesting. So let's get started!

How much?

Numbeo- convenient option find out how much housing, food, transportation, etc. cost in the country where you are going to go. Just select the desired criterion and estimate the budget for your trip.

How to get there

Kayak- We are looking for plane tickets. In my experience, he was the one who always gave me the cheapest prices for air travel. And, of course, don’t forget about flying out of Russia.

And if you don’t know where to go on a trip, you have a direct route to Drungli. This site will tell you where you can fly cheapest from your city on a specific date or display a table of prices for the entire month.

What to look for: what airport the plane arrives at (important for logistics or transfers), conditions for returning and exchanging tickets, baggage rules, meals on board.

Where to live

Hotels Combined - a decent metasearch engine for hotels in different countries, thanks to which you don’t have to check all the booking sites you know. On the site Bed and Breakfast you can find a B&B hotel (I just love them). Apart from searching for hotels, there is also a good content section with travel ideas and tips.

But hotels are not the only one possible variant for a stopover while traveling. On service Airbnb you can find an apartment, and on the website Hostels- find a cheap hostel. The website is useful for travelers with children Kids@Coe oriented towards family travel.

What to look for: Are local taxes, meals, and cancellation conditions included in the price?

What to do on the spot

Personally, I love getting to know real life in every new country and city I visit, so I always look for local friends on Couchsurfing. After all, they can not only give practical advice, but also arrange a tour, show you life from the inside, and even feed you lunch. In addition, you can always track parties and other activities organized by “surfers” in a particular city. Meeting similar travelers in person is always interesting and fun.

Second option - organize an official tour with a local resident, for example, using the service Tripster. By the way, here you can not only find a tour from the locals, but also ask the service participants a question of interest.

Smorodina- a startup guide to Russia that will tell you where to go and what to do without leaving your home country. Also from travelers for travelers.

In addition to Couchsurfing and Tripster, there are several other resources for finding travel tips and advice.

TripAdvisor- reviews of hotels, restaurants, beaches, etc. - a huge database of all kinds of objects and activities around the world. By the way, here you can find reviews about the hotel that you liked, for example, by price or location.

Gogobot - is somewhat similar to TripAdvisor, but also has a large community of traveler interests. On Gogobot you can ask a question or make a recommendation to others.

Travelers for travelers– another community of travelers from different countries focused on budget travel and getting to know local life and culture.

Find an expert

Don't have the desire or time to do everything yourself? Increase your budget by 10 - 20 € and order the desired service from others.

GO2- on this platform there is a good services section, where experienced travelers offer their assistance to beginners. For example, developing logistics, searching for plane tickets or housing options. There is no fixed price for any service, so you can negotiate with each expert individually.

Skillflick - A resource for finding local services in London, from excursions to clarinet lessons or professional wedding photography.

I think most of these services are familiar to experienced travelers or have alternatives. However, they will certainly be useful to those who are just taking their first steps in organizing independent trips.

Group tours are far from the only service that the modern industry can provide to a traveler.

Today, he has many alternatives in the form of independent or individual tourism, which allows him not to be tied to popular routes, or to certain types of transport, or to set departure dates for a wide range of clients.

We will analyze in detail what you need to know about the features of such a holiday and the options for organizing it in different countries.

Independent tourism is usually called such tourism, which involves complete or partial refusal from the services of tour operators. However, in most cases, tourists, especially beginners, do not completely refuse the help of specialists.

Most often, this type of tourism is used by travelers who want to attend themed festivals, concerts of their favorite bands, as well as other events for which group tours are not organized.

This type of tourism can be organized in various ways. In particular, it includes:

Backpacking is travel that involves minimal spending of money on travel and accommodation.
Hitchhiking is moving around a selected area using passing vehicles.
Booking – independent tourism, which does not involve the help of tour operators at all. The traveler independently books hotels, buys tickets, and receives a visa.
Autotourism is a type of travel in which the central means of transportation for tourists is a personal car.
Traveling through guest networks. The most popular amateur type of tour in recent years.

The advantages of this type of tourism include the ability to tailor a trip to suit your own budget, preferences, and schedule. That is why today it is developing so quickly and productively in various countries.

Amateur tourism is a type of independent tourism that involves the use of personal transport to travel along routes. This can be either a personal or rented vehicle. Most often this is a car, although it can be a yacht, an airplane or any other type.

Help travel agencies This type of tourism involves booking hotels, additional services ah, including obtaining a visa, drawing up a route (especially if a person is going on such a trip for the first time), sometimes even reserving the vehicle itself.

Also, a travel company can negotiate the services of local guides for its clients. However, in general, amateur tourism shifts to this type of organization only the most difficult questions departure, taking on the organization of the trip to the maximum.

It is this tourism that allows a person to enjoy all the benefits that specialized agencies provide, and at the same time freely choose the route, the type of hotels in which he wants to stay, as well as other parameters own rest.

Unlike alternative tours, it provides for full provision of organizational aspects of departure by the travel company itself. In this case, it should provide:

Consultations on choosing a route to suit your needs individual tour.
Booking tickets for the dates required by the client. This category includes not only international routes, but also domestic, if the client is expected to move from city to city.
Selection and booking of hotels.
Ordering tickets for the type of event chosen by the client - visiting exhibitions, theaters, entertainment venues, water parks and other similar places.
Providing additional services, including rental of a car, equipment for extreme tourism or other individual means necessary to provide a tour specifically in your case.

We can say that individual tourism occupies that golden mean between group and independent tours. It actually completely adapts to the client’s needs, but does not involve placing all the hassle of organizing the trip on him.

Those who like independent tourism can choose for themselves ready routes, developed by their predecessors who chose Poland for themselves. Among the most successful and truly interesting are the following:

Lublin, Krakow, Warsaw – self-guided tour major cities Poland, which has a record number historical places, interesting for tourists.
Poznan, Warsaw, Krakow, Lublin, Wroclaw - an extended individual tour of the most popular Polish cities, designed for those who want to get to know the history or culture of Poland in more detail.
Krakow, then Wroclaw, Warsaw, cozy Poznan, as well as small Gdansk and Gdynia. The tour brings together the brightest historical cities countries, as well as new small towns built in this country after the war.

These tours can be adapted as for regular excursion trip, and for religious and cultural tours.

The traveler only needs to choose the direction he is interested in in advance, and adapting it will not be at all difficult.

On such trips, the calculation of the time spent in each city is 1 day - 1 city.

Tours can be easily adjusted to suit the client’s wishes, for example, he can increase the time of stay in one location to 3 days or more, adjust the program of stay, add visits to seasonal exhibitions, performances, festivals and other events.

Also in Poland it is not difficult to organize amateur tourism by type of activity. This offer is especially often used for organizing extreme tours. Among them:

Horse rides. It is one of the most dynamic areas representing amateur tourism. Developed in Lodz, Bronszewice.
Boat trips in Gdynia or Pruszkow.
Rafting and rafting in Jaswily and Karpacz.
Kayaking trips in Przechlewo.
Walking tours. Since this destination has recently become very popular in Poland, amateur tourism of this type is organized in various places: Zakopane, Jaslo, Bronszewice.

Whatever amateur tourism a traveler chooses, when going to these parts of Poland, he can always count on the opportunity to book equipment for his sport here, as well as rent good apartments for accommodation.

You can go here at any time of the year. All you need to do is organize your trip correctly and obtain a visa to Poland. Fortunately, this is not so difficult to do today.

The difficulty of organizing a trip as part of an individual trip or self-guided tour depends directly on how actively a person involves travel agencies in this task.

After all, they can take upon themselves the preparation of most aspects for a person’s departure. The simplest thing in this regard is individual tourism. After all, here the client just needs to choose a route for himself, the agency does the rest. The remaining types have a lot of nuances in organization.

Fans of such a direction as amateur tourism should pay special attention to obtaining a visa. As you know, those who go to Schengen countries on group tours are given it much more readily.

If you decide to go on a vacation independent of travel companies (to travel independently), then you should familiarize yourself with the place where you want to go in advance.

For the safest possible trip, be sure to find out about the rules and regulations of your chosen vacation destination, because different countries have their own laws and customs, violation of which can lead to not very pleasant consequences.

The absolute advantages of independent tourism are that the choice of places, attractions, and excursions depends entirely on your decision. You are not obliged to follow certain routes offered by various travel agencies, and limit yourself to visiting only the most famous, remarkable places. Visit all the places that attract you, even those that are not very popular, but no less beautiful and interesting.

It is impossible to say for sure whether independent travel will be more economical. All this will depend on where you are heading.

You will have to take care of the tickets yourself; for this, there are special sites where you can sometimes find good deals.

There are also sites for booking hotel rooms. Or you can look for hotels and hostels when you arrive, but you can spend a lot of time and nerves on this, especially if you are still inexperienced and for the first time in this business. And there is also couchsurfing— great option for the original tourist, it is free and allows you to make new interesting acquaintances. You will be received, fed, told and shown everything, provided that you also undertake to provide your accommodation free of charge to tourists if they go to visit your country and choose you as an intermediary. Everything is provided for your convenience, so don't be afraid to get started!

You may need language skills to be able to contact the local population if any problems arise, so first learn a few basic phrases and be sure to take a phrase book with you.

Look for information and read reviews about attractions, architectural buildings, interesting shops, cafes, buy a route map - this will help you get your bearings better.

Thanks to traveling "savages", you are given complete independence from time, and you will be able to get to know the culture of a given area, its inhabitants, traditions, and discover something new and useful for yourself.

If you have enough Money, then do not limit your freedom, relax for your own pleasure! Of course, you can save up for a minivan and drive it around the world in search of adventure, but that will be a completely different story...

Here are several countries that are considered the most convenient for first independent travel: Thailand, Czech Republic, Malta, Greece, Bulgaria.

They have relatively inexpensive service, a developed industry, a lot of beautiful, worthy of attention, places

And remember that independent tourism is to some extent extreme, but after trying it once you are unlikely to want to return to regular travel.

Shashmurina Valeria Alexandrovna, bachelor, student
Altai State University

SELF-INDEPENDENT TOURISM
TECHNOLOGIES
FEATURES OF SELF-INDEPENDENT TOURISM

The article is devoted to the consideration of independent tourism, which has received active development in modern conditions. The work provides a definition of this method of organizing tourism and highlights the main features that distinguish independent tourism from other types of tourist activity. The main factors contributing to the rapid development of independent tourism are considered, and the results of a sociological study conducted in the Altai Territory are presented.

The current state of the tourism business (based on materials from a sociological study in the Altai Territory)
Motivation as an element of effective personnel management
Comparison of programming languages using the example of array sorting

With changes in the economy and rapid developments in technology, new ways of preparing and organizing travel are emerging. In particular, we are talking about independent tourism. Independent tourism is an increasingly widespread phenomenon. In this regard, it is quite relevant to substantiate the essence and specificity of this method of preparing and organizing travel.

According to the organizational principle, organized and independent tourism are distinguished. Organized tourism is strictly regulated travel offered by travel companies, and, as a rule, implemented on the basis of advance booking and payment. There is no unambiguous definition of the concept of “independent tourism”. An analysis of publications on the topic under consideration allows us to draw a conclusion about the many names of independent tourism (amateur, unorganized, independent, etc.).

The Federal Law “On the Fundamentals of Tourism Activities in the Russian Federation” uses the concept of “amateur tourism”, which means tourism organized by tourists independently.

A.Yu. Alexandrova uses the concept of “unorganized tourism,” which is travel organized by tourists themselves, without the participation of a tourism enterprise. At the same time, tourists independently develop a travel route, determine the objects to visit, the number of overnight stays and pay only for tourist services (accommodation, meals, etc.) at the time of their purchase.

O.T. Loiko believes that unorganized tourists are not bound by any mutual obligations with various kinds of intermediaries - public organizations or travel agencies. They travel on the principles of initiative and self-service.

T.V. Ryabova and E.V. Ertman in the article “Socio-cultural aspects of independent tourism” use the concept of “independent tourism”, which is understood as a specific type of tourism activity, within which the tourist creates a tourist product independently, in accordance with his own desires , motives and needs through the acquisition of individual elements of their journey.

In our opinion, the use of the concept “independent tourism” is the most appropriate to refer to the phenomenon under consideration.

The main characteristic feature of independent tourism is freedom of choice. The tourist independently chooses the place of travel, its route, the number of days of stay, methods of transportation and accommodation, types of food and excursion services. An independent tourist has the opportunity to create a program for his own trip, choosing the most desirable objects to visit during the trip that reflect his interests. Therefore, the variability of the route and content of the travel program can be considered as the next feature of independent tourism.

The main objective factor influencing the rapid development of independent tourism was the introduction information technologies and telecommunications. Technology is at the heart of reservation systems. Thanks to technology, a person with access to the Internet can obtain information on all types of services, including tour packages, accommodation facilities, air transportation, and car rentals. All the main tasks that were previously carried out by a representative of a travel agency are transferred to the “online” mode: selection of a product or individual services, booking, prepayment, payment, cancellation, rebooking.

T.V. Ryabova and E.V. Ertman note that in addition to the development of technology, the impetus for the growth in the number of independent tourists was the shortcomings of the mass package tourism product offered by intermediary travel agencies (programs can be standardized and overloaded). The inclusion of exclusivity in the tour program, as a rule, leads to a significant increase in its cost, as a result of which the availability of such a product for tourists is reduced.

In our opinion, the transition to mass independent planning of tours was also caused by the emerging distrust of the population in tour operators. In July–September 2014, there was a series of bankruptcies of leading companies. The ruin was an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of modern Russian tourism. As a result, many Russian tourists were forced to stop using the services of travel agencies and start organizing their holidays on their own.

In addition, as an analysis of foreign and domestic publications shows, in the tourism market there is a tendency for consumer behavior to change towards greater independence and independence from tourism enterprises.

In the context of analyzing independent travel planning, we will present the results of a sociological study conducted in October - December 2016 in the Altai Territory. General population - tourists Altai Territory(n=120, purposeful sampling was used, the method was based on the principle of convenience).

As the results of the questionnaire survey showed, 61% of the tourists surveyed in the Altai Territory preferred to organize their last trip completely independently. 24.4% of respondents turned to a travel agency for help, purchasing a ready-made tour package. 14.6% of tourists also turned to a travel agency for help, but entrusted the employees with only part of the tasks of organizing a vacation.

The main positive aspects of independent organization vacation, according to tourists (Figure 1), are independence and independence from the travel agency (37%), cost-effectiveness (33%), as well as a variety of vacation destinations (30%).

Figure 1. Positive aspects of independent tourism"

The first step in planning your own trip is booking transport tickets. More convenient and cheaper ticket options can be found using search engines. When analyzing the results of a survey of tourists in the Altai Territory, the most frequently used search engines were: Tutu.ru, OneTwoTrip, Tickets.Ru.

The second stage of independent organization is booking accommodation. There are many booking systems. Tourists in the Altai Territory used: Booking.com, Trivago.ru, OZON Travel when planning their latest tourist trip. These services allowed tourists to read reviews and also obtain information about the hotel of interest.

Despite the positive aspects of independent tourism, there are still a number of problems that cause difficulties. Summarizing the survey, the main problems for independent tourists were issues of medical insurance and health (45%), visa formalities (37.5%), and security issues abroad (17.5%).

The trend of the last decade has been the active development of independent tourism. As the results of the questionnaire showed, with this method of organization, tourists in the Altai Territory have autonomy and independence from the travel agency, they can save money, and the range of vacation destinations is expanding. Thus, an independent method of organizing tourism allows you to plan your trip in detail, based on personal preferences, and also do it yourself without intermediaries and overpayments.

Bibliography

Fundamentals of tourism: textbook / team of authors; edited by E.L. Pisarevsky. - M.: Federal agency on tourism, 2014. - 384 p.
Federal Law of November 24, 1996 No. 132-FZ (as amended on May 3, 2012) “On the Fundamentals of Tourism Activities in the Russian Federation” // Legal reference systems Consultant Plus.
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