CHANGES IN THE RECREATIONAL AND TOURIST LOAD ON THE ECO-SYSTEM IN THE CONDITIONS OF COVID-19

The tourism industry of the Kaliningrad region is one of the most dynamically develop­ing components of the regional economy. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the region's tourist volume was formed mainly due to external tourist flows. With the onset of the pandemic, there was a fear of an increase in the crisis situation in the industry, caused by a sharp de­crease in the number of tourists visiting the region from other regions of Russia. The main purpose of the study was to analyze the dynamics of domestic tourism in the Kaliningrad region for the period from June to August 2020. It was found that despite the restrictions that arose during the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic tourist flow has almost completely re­placed the external tourism. The main conclusion of the work is the unpreparedness of indi­vidual elements of the tourist infrastructure for a sharply increased flow of tourists. This, in turn, entails an increase in the anthropogenic load on natural ecosystems, which was shown by the example of the Curonian Spit National Park.