Selection of strategic priorities for sustainable development of tourism in a mountain region: concentration of tourist infrastructure or nature-oriented tourism

The paper discusses options for tourist development of the Altai-Sayan region. For this purpose, a comparison is made between the current state of tourism and sustainable development of tourism. This makes it possible to propose five stages for the strategy of sustainable tourism development in the Altai-Sayan mountain region. The preservation of biodiversity and ethnic characteristics of the territory underlie the ethnoecological type of tourism, being the most consistent with the principles of sustainable development and promising in the studied mountain region. Functional zoning is considered as an important method for balancing and optimizing environmental management. It is proposed to use the landscape-adaptive principle as a basis for spatial planning of tourist service in the mountainous region. The spatial elements of the tourist network of the mountain region were analyzed. This made it possible to reveal the predominance of the linear structure in connection with the mountain-valley relief. There are also examples of radiation, dispersion, focal and linear-perpendicular structures of tourist networks. This allowed highlighting the priorities of tourist development for different territories. Functional zoning of the Altai-Sayan region with the identification of priorities in the development of the territory was proposed. This allowed identifying the spatial distribution of areas of intensive tourist use and areas of nature preservation and ecotourism. In addition, zones of weak economic development were identified with a predominance of tourist routes, as well as those of medium economic development with local tourist centers.