Guidelines for overcoming the impact of seasonalitu factor in Ukrainian ski resort Bukovel

Abstract

The article provides an overview of the main principles for overcoming the impact of seasonality factor and presents optimization ways to the increase of tourism demand at the Ukrainian ski-resort Bukovel in off-season. The essence of the phenomenon “seasonality” is defined. It is seen as a universal and problematic factor in tourism. The problem of determining seasonality has been studied by the Ukrainian - O.Beidyk, M.Malska, O.Davidova and foreign scientists R.Butler, R.Hartmann, J. Connell, S. Page, D. Meyer, M.Bigovic, A.Phelps, J.Y.Chung. The development of the Ukrainian ski-resort Bukovel is compared to the most popular and significant European resorts such as France, Switzerland, Austria and Italy. The reasons of seasonality are viewed for optimizing ways of attracting tourists to spending their holidays in Bukovel. Among the actions which can be taken to mitigate the effects of seasonality as offered by Professor Richard Butler (2014) we stress that the intensity of the visitation to the resort can be strengthened by a) extending the season and b) adding a second main season. Both of the ways are aimed at the attracting a wider market to the resort Bukovel. The importance of rural green tourism in the process of transforming a ski resort Bukovel into a year-round destination is demonstrated. The positive influence of rural green tourism on the revival, preservation and development of local folk customs, crafts, historical and cultural heritage monuments is described. As a conclusion we suggest to deal with the surface of the problem of seasonality factor by introducing a new discipline “Green Tourism in Precarpathia with Culturological Aspects” on the basis of the Faculty of Tourism, Vasyl Stefanyk National Precarpathian University. This is the effective way for successful development of green tourism in the Ukrainian Carpathians. The objective of the course is to train the future tourism managers with the ability to perform the culture-oriented professional activity; to discover the peculiarities of supervising personnel, to train skills of green tourism management and marketing.