The article defines the directions that it is recommended to assess the role of the population in the formation of recreation and tourism activities (RTA). It is proved the need to investigate the role of the population in the RTA in two main directions: 1) as a subject of recreational and tourist systems in its relation to their media (objects); 2) combined - as a subject and component of the object of recreational and tourist systems. The population forms the flows of recreation and tourists, developing relevant structures and mechanisms for their recreational and tourist service, organizes directions and fields of economic and non-economic activities that ensure the recreational needs of the population, creates a specialized recreation infrastructure, develops and implements a variety of functional and territorial organization of recreation and tourism, forms at the national and international level of territorial division of labor.
In order to evaluate the recreational potential of a separate plot or object usually consider not the entire nomenclature of conditions and resources, but only a characteristic or typical combination. Each territory, each object of recreation and tourism has its own set (complex) of resource characteristics. And this circumstance greatly facilitates the procedure for a comprehensive assessment of recreational potential due to elimination (allocation) of a characteristic complex of terms and resources of RTA. A similar situation arises for a functional assessment of recreational potential. The valuation of conditions and resources are not developed for a general list of species and forms of RTA, but for those that are distributed in this area in this locality.
It is determined that among the numerous characteristics and indicators of recreational potential, the concept of recreational and tourist attractiveness is one of the objective indicators of resource potential. Estimation of recreational potential for quantitative indicators of recreation and tourists and their numerical and spatial distributions creates an objective basis for all other characteristics and indicators of RTD.
Another important characteristic of the recreational potential, which forms the population as a factor of RTA is a recreation capacity of territories and objects of RTA. The concept of "recreational capacity" is related to "recreational attractiveness". Attractiveness characterizes recreational territories and objects for their attraction, according to real flows of recreation and tourists. Recreational capacity is intended to set the upper limits of such attractiveness. Attractiveness represents the actual use of a recreational resource, and the capacity indicates its critical level of recreation, which does not lead to degradation of this resource. In recreational geography, tourism and planning of territories, this direction is well known and extremely designed. The indicators of recreational capacities for certain types and recreation forms and recreations - beach baths, short-term rest in green zones, anthropogenic load of resort zones and areas of the natural reserve fund, maximum population density in various functional zones of the big city, etc. At the same time, the zonal principles of assessing the recreational capacity of objects and areas of recreation and tourism have not yet been developed, and this actual problem is waiting for its researchers.
The population forms a so-called anthropogenic load on the territory, and its economic activity is man-made load. Anthropogenic-technogenic load is considered as a factor of recreational and tourist activities, in turn, indicators of anthropogenic-technogenic load are the original characteristics of "anti-resource" of recreation potential. The article has proven that in the context of the study of the prerequisites for the development of recreation and tourist activities of the region also need to analyze both the quality of life of the population, in addition to the assessment of this indicator have a high contrast and diversity in the country.
Key words: population, recreational and tourist potential, attractiveness of recreational territories, anthropogenic-technogenic load, quality of life of the population.
POPULATION AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF RECREATIONAL AND TOURIST POTENTIAL