Vladivostok fortress has become one of the regions’ s main tourist attractions.

Tourism is one of the sectors most heavily affected by COVID-19. Experts believe that the industry will undergo significant restructuring, with travel abroad giving way to domestic tourism, and trips to places where people don’t gather in large numbers becoming more popular. According to Managing Director of the 21st Century Arctic International Union Valery Korovkin, current circumstances offer a chance to develop a new tourist destination. It is an area that has been discussed for a long time, but which little is currently being done to promote. Arctic tourism is a potentially highly profitable business from the perspective of federal and regional budgets, and has long been successfully exploited by other coastal nations.

The article presents a theoretical and methodological rationale for improving the efficiency of the functioning of tourism and recreation zones in Russia based on the study of domestic practice and analysis of the opinion of the expert community of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum participants. Special attention is paid to the issues of organizational and economic support of public-private partnership programs in the field of tourism and recreation, as well as the development of cluster structures.