Рrospects for the development of religious and excursion tourism in Ukraine

Abstract

For religious and excursion tourism, sacral buildings that have a special architecture and history are of particular interest, and are often architectural monuments of national significance or represent UNESCO heritage. The subject of the study is the development of religious excursion tourism in Ukraine. The purpose of the article is to determine the state of development and prospects of religious excursion tourism in Ukraine. The goal: to carry out an analysis of the resource base of religious excursion tourism in Ukraine, to determine the state of development of religious excursion tourism in Ukraine; to analyze the foreign experience of the development of religious excursion tourism; to determine the problems and prospects of the development of religious excursion tourism in Ukraine. Research methods used during the writing of the work: statistical, graphic, cartographic, analytical, comparative methods, experimental method, method of scoring. The following results were obtained: the work determined the number of religious buildings of the most common denominations on the territory of Ukraine, architectural monuments of national significance of Ukraine and sacred buildings included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The epochs of the construction of sacred buildings and the inherent styles of building religious architecture are given. The peculiarities of the architecture of religious affiliation in the regions of Ukraine are determined. Existing tours and sight-seeing excursions from the leading domestic tour operators of Ukraine were also analyzed. The current trends in the development of cultural and religious tourism in the Kharkiv region were investigated. Conclusions: the significant destruction of church architecture as a result of the war in Ukraine, insufficient supervision of architecture and lack of funds for its restoration, legal problems, low awareness of the country's tourist representatives about the possibilities of using religious objects for the needs of tourism are identified as problems of the organization of this type of tourism. Among the available prospects, the authors indicate: 3D tours of temples and cathedrals, VR reality, interactive installations, 3D mapping, setting up museums inside churches, camping tourism, etc. Therefore, the sacred architecture of Ukraine is an important factor in the formation of new excursion routes that can interest various groups of tourists whose purpose of travel is religious excursion tourism.