CURRENT STATE AND PROSPECTS OF HOTEL DEVELOPMENT IN UKRAINE: CRITICAL FACTORS AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

The article discusses the current state of hotel business in Ukraine and provides grounds and prospects for its further development along with revealing the main challenges faced by the hotel sector in Ukraine in recent years. Since the beginning of 2014, the Ukrainian hotel services market has experienced sharp decline affected by volatile socioeconomic situation, external armed aggression in the East part of the country, the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula, as well as a range of other critical systemic problems. The study suggests promising vectors in the national hotel industry development, provides its dynamics statistics and presents a forecast as to the number of hotels and similar accommodation in Ukraine. The findings have identified major trends in the dynamics of the domestic tourist flows that greatly affect the hotel business development. It is emphasized that currently the hotel industry is facing a serious crisis. The study also reveals the key barriers to successful development of hotel business in Ukraine together with identifying the critical factors driving the Ukrainian hospitality sector, such as public governance, social, economic, financial, environmental, safety factors, etc. Practical implications of the research cover a set of priority measures to enhance the Ukrainian hotel industry performance which involve in particular the creation of a strong investment climate; ensuring comfortable and safe tourist environment to visit the Ukraine; building effective policies to promote mass tourism development and its implementation at the governmental level; re-thinking of the tourist tax mechanisms; designing projects to improve the condition of historic monuments and to construct new mass tourism facilities; gaining a competitive edge in the hospitality sector by implementing new management models, modern research and technology advances in hotels; ensuring hotel industry transparency with a focus towards customers, etc. A special emphasis is put to the critical need of further research to boost the search for new mechanisms to reform the hospitality sector, to develop new concepts and management methods, since the permanent turbulence of both internal and external environment trigger new problems and challenges to the Ukrainian hotel business realia.