The practice of tourism activities over the past twenty years has been significantly enriched by innovative solutions and actions of key players in the tourism market – tour operators’ organizations. Being in a free search for effective methods of increasing competitiveness, tour operators have also repeatedly found themselves in difficult market conditions, motivating their activation and the need to make the most important strategic decisions adequate to crisis situations, which subsequently radically changed the approach to the organization of tourist activities, determined the development trends not only of tour operator activity, but also of the tourism industry as a whole. In this regard, it is relevant to analyze the causes, results and logic of such decisions, comprehend the accumulated experience and identify prospects for further improvement of tour operator activities. It is advisable to highlight the most important signs and content of key transformations in the chronology of advanced solutions of tour operators and to designate their system. Following this idea, the article presents the results of an analysis of a number of key decisions aimed at improving the efficiency of tour operator activities from the period of the formation of mass tourism to the present (using the example of best practices of Biblio-Globus, Coral Travel, Pegas Touristik, Anex Tour, TEZ Tour). The progressive practice of individual tour operators was quickly mastered by other enterprises, and contributed to increasing the sustainability of the tourism industry. As a result, the trajectory of the progress of tour operator activity is presented in the form of a sequence of stages of its improvement. The most significant are the stages associated with the accumulation of sales volumes of travel packages, the formation of multinational companies, integration with transport enterprises (airlines), the transition to the use of dynamic tools for the formation of tourist products and pricing, as well as the process of building an ecosystem of a new format in the tourism industry. It is proved that, in general, the development of technologies of tour operator activity is based on integration processes, the concepts of which are becoming more complicated.
The practice of tourism activities over the past twenty years has been significantly enriched by innovative solutions and actions of key players in the tourism market – tour operators’ organizations. Being in a free search for effective methods of increasing competitiveness, tour operators have also repeatedly found themselves in difficult market conditions, motivating their activation and the need to make the most important strategic decisions adequate to crisis situations, which subsequently radically changed the approach to the organization of tourist activities, determined the development trends not only of tour operator activity, but also of the tourism industry as a whole. In this regard, it is relevant to analyze the causes, results and logic of such decisions, comprehend the accumulated experience and identify prospects for further improvement of tour operator activities. It is advisable to highlight the most important signs and content of key transformations in the chronology of advanced solutions of tour operators and to designate their system. Following this idea, the article presents the results of an analysis of a number of key decisions aimed at improving the efficiency of tour operator activities from the period of the formation of mass tourism to the present (using the example of best practices of Biblio-Globus, Coral Travel, Pegas Touristik, Anex Tour, TEZ Tour). The progressive practice of individual tour operators was quickly mastered by other enterprises, and contributed to increasing the sustainability of the tourism industry. As a result, the trajectory of the progress of tour operator activity is presented in the form of a sequence of stages of its improvement. The most significant are the stages associated with the accumulation of sales volumes of travel packages, the formation of multinational companies, integration with transport enterprises (airlines), the transition to the use of dynamic tools for the formation of tourist products and pricing, as well as the process of building an ecosystem of a new format in the tourism industry. It is proved that, in general, the development of technologies of tour operator activity is based on integration processes, the concepts of which are becoming more complicated.