TOURIST POTENTIAL OF LVIV REGION AND ITS RESORT SETTLEMENTS
Authors: Kovalchuk Iryna 
Published: December 2023

The tourism industry and its balneological component is that branch of the economic complex that allows effective utilization of the potential of local resources – landscape, water, biotic, balneological, recreational, ethnographic, architectural, historical and cultural, as well as traditions of the local ethnic group.
The analysis of the tourism sphere of the regions of Ukraine, in particular the Lviv region, is in the field of view of researchers of various departments and universities of the Carpathian-Podilsky region of Ukraine, including the department of tourism of the geography faculty of Ivan Franko Lviv National University. In the works of these scientists, the main attention was paid to the study of factors affecting the development of tourism in the Lviv region, the formation of the specific structure of tourism activity in the region, the characteristics of the prerequisites for the emergence and development of elements of the infrastructure of tourism and its individual types. At the same time, issues of analysis and assessment of the potential and threats to the development of tourism in the Lviv region and its resort settlements remain insufficiently covered.
The Lviv region is considered one of the richest regions of Ukraine in terms of recreational and medical resources. However, today there are many factors that hold back the development of the tourist potential of resort settlements in the Lviv region. These factors include insufficient level of development of the service industries of the economic complex of the region, insufficient state support for tourism as an economic sector (imperfection of the state regulatory and legal framework, lack of adequate funding of programs, etc.) due to military actions on the territory of the country, inadequate coordination of the activities of urban economic sectors, lack of flexible systems for stimulating investment in tourism, insufficient number of means of accommodation for tourists of various categories, lack of funds for a set of advertising campaigns to promote the tourist product of Lviv region on the international tourist market, etc.
In such conditions, determining the touristic (in particular balneological) potential of resort settlements in the Lviv region, analyzing the factors affecting it, substantiating directions for its rational use is an urgent task that requires further research.
Summing up, we can conclude that it is necessary to develop new tourist routes by resort settlements of the Lviv region to attract more tourists. Given the currently uncertain, but certainly significant damage caused by the Russian invasion, the usual resort development measures may not be enough. Regardless of the recorded positive trend in the development of the tourist industry of Lviv region, its tourist and recreational potential and infrastructural support, the assessment of damages and the construction of an optimal strategy for the development of the tourism sector will require the effective use of all available tools available to a modern scientist, including SWOT analysis, GIS, etc.
Keywords: resort settlements, tourist potential, tourism infrastructure, natural tourism resources, Lviv region.