Tourists of the world, unite! The interpretation and facilitation of tourism towards the end of the Soviet Union (1962–1990)

Beyond “culture”: A comparative study of forces structuring tourism consumption

“…Since 2017, international outbound tourism has been again on the rise (tourism-review.com, 2019). As a communist state, the U.S.S.R. was an early adopter of social tourism, which was developed, organized, and administered by various official governmental bodies (Assipova & Minnaert, 2014). The decentralization of the economy in 1985 provided room for investment decisions by individual enterprises, which, however, had not become prominent in the tourism sector till late 1990s.…”

“…Before the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, when the country was supported by a well-structured social welfare system, most working people were entitled to social tourism. In fact, the right to leisure, of which tourism was a part, was written in the U.S.S.R. Constitution (Assipova & Minnaert, 2014). Through traveling, people witnessed firsthand how the government supplied U.S.S.R. regions and republics with consumer products and foodstuffs (both were in deficit) unevenly.…”

“…Ideology affected tourism consumption in two major ways. First, state-sponsored travel provided the first tourism opportunities for the Chinese and Russian respondents-the aspect manifesting particularly strongly in Russia (then U.S.S.R.) with its long history of social tourism (Assipova & Minnaert, 2014).…”

Developments in understanding tourism policy

“…Reference has already been made above to works that explore the influence of neoliberalism on tourism, and indeed this sets an important context for many recent studies. Similarly previous work has examined the development of tourism under the ideology of the former communist countries (Assipova and Minnaert, 2014;Hall, 1990Hall, , 2001 as well as in the countries in transition (Suntikul et al, 2010). An early example of work in this area is provided by Wanhill (1987), who considered the political context of tourism at a local level in the UK, and later, Chambers and Airey (2001) examined how tourism fared under left-and right-oriented governments in Jamaica in the 1970s and 1980s.…”