Because of this, the research applies a socio-cultural approach as an interdisciplinary integrative methodology that synthesizes the methodological potential of various disciplines and fields of knowledge. In particular, it has been found that the existing scientific heritage does not solve the main problem as a resolving the contradiction between the need to develop cultural tourism in the Kirovohrad region and the lack of appropriate conceptual foundations for its substantiation at the level of theoretical studies and regulatory provisions, taking into account the specifics, trends and prospects for the further functioning of the tourism industry in the context of globalization, digitalization, wartime and other modern challenges.
The second part notes that in the new economic, political and socio-cultural realities of the post-Soviet era, which led to the reconstruction of the tourism industry, many Ukrainian regions, including Kirovohrad region, are at the stage of restoration or massive interest of tourists in their territories and cultural resources. Despite the sufficient amount of the latter, Kirovohrad region remains among the “outsiders” in terms of integration and realization of its own tourism potential. The popular types of tourism include cultural, rural (“green”), sports and recreation, and religious tourism. The problems that determine the outsider position of the Kirovohrad region in terms of realizing the resource and cultural and cognitive potential are divided into four groups: objective, research, managerial, and complex.
It is emphasized that the “saturation” of the region with sacred objects, settlements of Trypillian culture, architectural monuments, historical events, excursion routes, etc. indicates a sufficient ontological basis for cultural tourism. It goes about forming the tourist image of the region by attracting objects and monuments for tourist excursions, exposition and exhibition and other cultural and educational purposes, constructing a cultural and tourist space that allows us to rethink the configuration of semantic relations in the structure of this space and the functionality of the tourist cluster. The most popular areas of cultural tourism in Kirovohrad region include event (fair and festival) tourism, archaeological, ethnographic and library tourism, and gastronomic tourism.
It is paid attention that the globalization has exacerbated the problem of shifting the ethical emphasis of the civil service towards the principles accepted in business (managerialism, consumerism, corporatism, etc.), which are contrary to the traditional identity, legitimacy and morality of this industry. This is manifested in the inadequate attention of the regional authorities which primitivizes and levels the cultural significance of the region's “tourist magnets”. It is found that the main problems outlined in the “Regional Tourism Development Program in Kirovohrad Region for 2022–2027” are complemented by the development of a fruitful methodology for the socio-cultural design of the region's tourist space, which should form the basis of the future program “Management of Cultural Heritage and Cultural Tourism in Kirovohrad Region” and the “Comprehensive Program for the Development of Culture in Kirovohrad Region for 2023–2030”. At the same time, it is argued that the Russian-Ukrainian war initiated deep philosophical and sociological reflections on the status of cultural practices in tourism, shaped the phenomenology of post-war tourism in Ukraine, which is gradually turning into a field of constitutionalizing socio-cultural changes, where recreation fades into the background, and rational and epistemological activity, focus on the novelty of sensations from a deeper acquaintance with the culture of the country that defended the freedom and values of the free world from the threat of occupation, comes to the fore.
