Tourism Department

The history of the department begins in 1967, when for the first time in the USSR the curriculum of specialization “Local history, methods and organization of tourist and excursion business” was implemented at the University.

Gennadiy Dolzhenko played the main role in the formation of the country’s first Department of tourism: the first nature excursions in the Caucasus were planned and described. He wrote the first monograph in the country, that was called “The History of Tourism in the Pre-Revolutionary Russia and the USSR”.

In 1991, the University created the first Department of tourism among the country’s Universities – the Department of general geography, local history and tourism.

In 2004, The Ministry of Education of Russia allows only two universities – Moscow State University and Rostov State University – to carry out the first student enrollment in Russia in the new experimental direction “Tourism”.

In 2011, the first student enrollment for the undergraduate program was carried out.

Since 2012, the Department has been recruiting for master’s programs under the program “Organization and Technologies of International and Domestic Tourism”.

In 2014, a network of master’s program was developed together with the Baltic Federal University.

The Department pays great attention to the research activities of students and teachers. From 2011 to 2017, the department held an international scientific and practical conference on tourism studies. In 2018 and 2019, its successor was the international scientific-practical conference of students, graduate students and young scientists “Modern problems and technologies in the field of tourism, hotel business, and service. State and municipal management of the tourist and recreational complex: Russian and foreign experience.”

Students supervised by teachers of the Department of Tourism take an active part in Russian and foreign scientific conferences: Lomonosov Readings (Moscow); Grand Geographical Festival of Students and Young Scientists (St. Petersburg); International Week of the University of Applied Sciences Janos Kodolani “Inclusive Society – Well-being – Participati” (Budapest, Hungary).

The department participates in international cooperation programs. Since 2011, creative relations with the University of Budapest and Kodolani University (both – Hungary) are established. In the framework of academic mobility programs, students undergo semester studies at the University of Macerata (Italy), Belarusian State University.

Students of the Department participate in the social, cultural and sports life of the university, as well as in the activities of student associations in the field of professional training. More than 30 students took part in the work of the Sochi Olympics student team in servicing guests of the XXII Winter Olympic Games, in the work of the Small Academy of Tourism of the South of Russia, in the preparation and conduct of the annual regional festivals “Vozvete prairie”, dedicated to the development of ecological tourism on the Don, All-Russian Student Spring Festival, in the international competition of student projects Enactus.

Graduates of the Department today occupy a leading position in the formation of the modern tourism industry in the South of Russia: they are chiefs or leading experts of travel agencies and tour operator companies, work as guides, managers in collective tourist accommodation facilities.

The main scientific directions of the department:

• History and methodology of tourism;
• Excursion business and methods of conducting excursions;
• Problems of ecological tourism in the Southern Federal District;
• Cluster development of tourism in Russia;
• Research and assessment of tourism resources;
• Applied aspects of tourism activities (tour operator and travel agency activities, the assessment of collective means of accommodation of international tourist destinations).

Scientific research is constantly being conducted to assess the tourist and recreational potential and the creation of tourist products within the Lower Don and the North Caucasus, and tourist and recreational areas are monitored in the Krasnodar Territory, the Republic of Adygea, and the Karachay-Cherkess Republic.