POTENTIALITIES FOR ORGANIZING INTERACTION BETWEEN HOSPITALITY PARTIES TO INCREASE TOURIST ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE REGION (AS EXEMPLIFIED IN THE SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY ON INTERACTION BETWEEN SOCIAL COMMUNION OF GUESTS AND HOTEL EMPLOYEES OF YEKATERINBURG)

Abstract

The sociological interpretation of interaction between hospitality subjects gives an opportunity to identify features that make the region attractive for tourists. Since tourist activities imply guesthood let us focus on peculiarities of social interaction between service actors: social communion of regional lodging properties’ employees and their guests. The analysis of interaction between hospitality subjects allows for establishing cause-and-effect relationships with regard to the content and form of social processes and relations emerging within socio-cultural tourist domain of the Sverdlovsk region. A sociological approach to the analysis of service practices provides an opportunity to recognize social resources necessary for scaling up attractiveness of hospitality enterprises. Personal experience of staying at a hotel in the process of its treatment and reproduction becomes interpersonal, group and mutual experience; in its socialized form it is replicated in inter-communion interaction. The positive meaning of inter-communion interaction maintains market attractiveness of a tourist destination. The analysis was based on the results of the survey administered to 407 guests of Yekaterinburg hotels. The article explores factors effecting a consumer’s choice of a lodging property, the formation of guests’ impression of their staying which predetermines the conditions of shaping guests’ loyalty. Hospitality properties’ command of the given factors allows them to build relationships with their clients in the right way, and thereby to provide the property’s success and to make a greater contribution to the region’s welfare and life of local communities.