Self-tourism as an Alternative to Organized Tourism: Benefits, Challenges, Threats

The article is devoted to the consideration of socio-economic backgrounds of the emergence and spreading of independent travel, the main trends in changing of the demands and expectations of tomorrow’s tourists. The purpose of this work is to study the main tendencies in independent travel, the advantages of independent travel over organized tours and excursions, to identify the main challenges and threats to travelers on their own. It has been proved that the main objective factor that influenced the rapid development of the independent tourism is a widespread introduction of information technologies and telecommunications. It has been determined that independent travels have certain advantages over organized tours; it is focused on the challenges and threats of independent travel. The trend of the rapid growth of the number of independent travels around the world has been confirmed statistically