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Volume XII |

The Role of Infrastructure and Touristic Traffic in Romania’s Touristic Regionalization

Abstract: The touristic regionalization, in most cases, is performed by taking into account the tourism potential as main reference, in this respect numerous methodologies having attempted to quantify as balanced as possible both the natural tourism potential and the man-made one. Beyond its great theoretical importance, their actual, practical and statistical value is yet limited, given that all economic and socio-political analyses, reports and comparisons have a mandatory administrative dimension, too. These present realities constitute the main reason why we believe that a deepening of regionalization which takes into consideration, more than others made so far, the administrative component, on the one hand, and the actual revaluation, on the other hand, embodied in the existence of specific infrastructure, which together with the tourism potential shall determine the attraction of tourist flows. In this respect, we tried to consider, to share and to model a large number of indicators to reach an outcome which provides a more real, synthetic and complete image (8 data sets were structured and combined, calculating 13 indicators, subsequently synthesized into 5, which led to the preparation of maps: afterwards these were overlapped for county level, respectively their average at the level of development regions. Such a regionalization also reflects the real role that tourism plays in the economic balance of counties, respectively development regions.

Volume XI |

Identity and sustainable development in rural tourism

Abstract: There are many studies talking about the “anonymity” in which our country is sinking, in terms of international tourist identity, of the symbols that define us. We have never known how to promote ourselves using the unique elements that we have and not because we do not have these unique features, but because it is possible that we do not know or we have forgotten what really represents us. There were several initiatives, some of them recent and costly to create and promote a country brand, starting from tourism, but these did not have the expected impact. Why did not have the expected impact? Have we got an element/several elements that may render a sustainable image, not a temporary one, for us and for the Romanian rural tourism? Are the village, the traditions, and the gastronomy authentic elements of tourist identity for the Romanian village as an element within the tourist offer? What symbols, values, ideas, feelings, places, emotions, personalities, food, artistic expressions are by excellence truly Romanian? How many of us recognize them? These are only a couple of the many questions we try to answer, not desperately, but with the interest of the person who is not only in love with tourism, its values, with its message over time. The article tries to underline the role of identity in the promotion of a tourist product, the Romanian village, a valuable treasure up to the present based on an adequate methodology of the tourism geography research (questionnaires, diagnosis, analytical prospecting, etc.).