Infrastructure aspects of transborder tourism in Chernivtsi

This work contains numerical analysis of tourism infrastructure of Chernivtsi region as a key factor required for smooth functioning of tourism services. Such infrastructure includes roads and transportation, border checkpoints, hotels and lodging, availability of tour operators and travel agents, visitor centers, and tourism information centers. In Chernivtsi region, transportation infrastructure consists of three components: automotive transportation, railways, and aviation. Specific availability of automobile roadways per unit area in the region is higher than average across Ukraine: 373 km of hard surface auto roadways per one thousand square kilometers compared to 272.7 km average for all of Ukraine. The density of railway tracks in the region is 51 km per 1000 km2 whereas it is 37 km / 1000 km2 for all of Ukraine. Even though the auto and railroad networks in the region are relatively dense, they constitute only a small fraction compare to the transportation network of the whole country, just over 2 % of the Ukrainian transportation network by several different measures. Passenger transportations in the region occurs via automotive travel, air travel, rail travel, and local municipal electric-powered vehicle (trolleybus) connections. The total number of distinct passengers serviced by all means of transportation in the region in 2017 as 94.8M persons. This number is 15.2% larger than the corresponding measurement from 2016 but smaller than the numbers for 2014 and 215 by, respectively, 3.1 % and 14.1 %. The total passenger throughput within the transportation system is measured in pass-km, passenger-per-kilometer. In 2017 in Chernivtsi region, this throughput was 885.3M pass-km, a 11.9 % increase since 2017. Along the 225 stretch of Ukrainian-Romanian border within Chernivtsi region there is only one international border checkpoint for automobiles and buses and one railroad checkpoint. Most of border checkpoints in Chernivtsi region are located on the 170 km-long stretch of the between Ukraine and Moldova. There a total of eleven checkpoints, 8 automotive and 3 railway ones. Border crossing by airline passengers is done at the checkpoint created at Chernivtsi International Airport (CWC). During 2017, there were 65 tourist service providers registered in Chernivtsi region (in 2016, there were 66). Of these, 58.5 % were corporate entities and 41.5 % were individual entrepreneurs. Of the total number of tourist services, there were 10 tour operators, 51 travel / tourism agents, and 4 entities focusing solely on tour-guide activities. The largest number of tourist service providers is operating out of the city of Chernivtsi: 52. Of these, nine are tour operators, forty are travel agents, and three provide tour guide services. In 2017, 20.3 thousand persons were the clients of organized tourist services in the region, purchasing 10.3 thousand travel vouchers of different kind for the total of 184.3 million hryvnia. Of these persons, 99.6 % were citizens of Ukraine and 0.4 % reported citizenship in other countries. Children and young adults constituted 20.6 % of the overall number of tourists. The number of clients of officially registered guided tourist routs was 5.6 thousand. In 2017, there were 75 hotels and other tourist lodging facilities in the region, a 5.1 % decrease compared to 2016. These lodging facilities in 2017 offered 1.5K separate rooms and 3.3K individual beds. The number of clients served by Chernivtsi region hotels in 2017 was 117.0 thousand persons, a 10.7 % increase in comparison with 2016. According to the official statistics, during 2017, hotels and tourist lodges of Chernivtsi region hosted 6.8 thousand non-Ukrainian-citizen tourists from 56 foreign countries, a 5.8% fraction of all hotel clients in the region. The total number of nights spent by international tourists in Chernivtsi region in 2017 was 22.7 thousand, 2.0-fold increase over the preceding year. The primary source of international visitors to Chernivtsi region was Romania (1.5 thousand visitors), Belarus (0.9 thousand visitors), Moldova (0.8K visitors), Israel (0.6 thousand), Poland and Turkey (0.4 thousand each), Germany and United States of America (0.3 thousand each). The visitors to the region were served by two visitor information centers, in Chernivtsi and in Vyzhnytsia, and the Information and Communication Center of Development of Historic and Ethnographic Tourism in Bukovina situated in the main building of Chernivtsi National University, a historical landmark, formerly, the seat of Archbishops of Bukovina and Dalmatia of the Orthodox Christian Church. Overall, Chernivtsi region can be positioned as an attractive location for inter-regional and international cooperation in the area of tourism and tourism services. However, a number of problems of availability and quality of key parts of tourism infrastructure required to be solved in order to further develop tourism in the region. Key words: cross-border tourism, cross-border region, tourism infrastructure, visitor flow.