Leo Gumilev's theory of ethnogenesis is gaining increasing significance when planning socio-economic processes both at the business and government levels. We aim at assessing the role of passionarians in the tourism industry and outlining possible ways of developing a tourist company, a region, tourist industry affected by passionarians as well as streamlining management taking into consideration the influence of passionarians. We describe the application of the ethnogenesis theory by the example of tourism development in modern Russia; the events resulting in the emergence of passionarians within the industry are revealed. We consider negative and positive influence of passionarians, depending on the social scale of their activity; an attempt to compare the phase of ethnogenesis with the activity of tourist companies is made.