Enhancing the Methodological Foundations of Tourism Village Development and Their Improvement in the Context of Uzbekistan

This article examines the methodological foundations of tourism village development and the issues involved in improving them in the context of Uzbekistan. The study argues that tourism villages should be understood not simply as rural settlements with tourism potential, but as integrated territorial systems in which local resources, accommodation facilities, service chains, community participation, destination governance, sustainability criteria, and market access are coordinated into a coherent development model. The purpose of the article is to systematize the principal methodological approaches to tourism village development in international scholarship and policy practice, to identify their core structural elements, and to propose an improved framework applicable to Uzbekistan. The research is qualitative and conceptual, drawing on systems analysis, comparative review, document analysis, and conceptual synthesis. The results show that a viable tourism village development model requires six interrelated methodological blocks: territorial resource diagnosis, accommodation and service integration, community participation, sustainability assessment, destination governance, and digital positioning and monitoring. The article also demonstrates that Uzbekistan already possesses a meaningful institutional and infrastructural base for tourism village development. In 2024, the country recorded 7,957.2 thousand inbound tourism trips, 2,383 hotels and similar accommodation establishments, and 566 individual and other accommodation facilities.