Legal regulation of tourist activities: retrospective analysis, current state and prospects of development

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the study of the issues of formation and development of tourist activities in Russia in the pre-revolutionary, Soviet, post-Soviet and modern periods of history, the analysis of problems of legal regulation of relations in connection with the implementation of tourist activities in current conditions, as well as the legal assessment of the prospects of such regulation. In the article, the factors determining the development of certain types of tourism, the directions of formation of public policy for the development of tourism in different historical conditions, the models of legal regulation of tourist activities combining organizational-public influence and private bases of regulation of the provision of related services have been provided for each historical period. The main tourist relations associated with the provision of tourism services are of private nature. Taking this into consideration, it should be stated that a special law under study, in spite of many changes, still has disadvantages associated with the terminology used, still full of declarative rules and rules of indirect action. This is not conducive to implementing many positive provisions aimed at protecting the rights of tourists, preserves a number of inconsistencies towards civil law on consumer rights protection, and does not adequately regulate contractual relations between tourists and travel agents (tour operators). The novelty of research is determined by the fact that the author proposed the periodization of the stages of development of tourism legal regulation. In addition, based on the analysis of the current legal regulation of tourism, proposals have been made to improve tourism legislation