Ge eo oJ Jo ou ur rn na al l o of f T To ou ur ri is sm m a an nd d G Ge eo os si it te es s Year X

Ge eo oJ Jo ou ur rn na al l o of f T To ou ur ri is sm m a an nd d G Ge eo os si it te es s Year X XI II I, vol. 28, no.

Metropolitan areas provide many opportunities to spend quality outdoor leisure time as well as to discover many cultural attractions. Sprawl occurs in Romania quite rapidly, encouraged by the construction of ring roads around many cities and their expansion into metropolitan areas. The current paper aims to identify metropolitan tourism models based on which tourist flows can be sustainably reoriented within rural Oradea Metropolitan Area (OMA) given their the tourist potential level (i.e., very low, low, average, high). The tourist potential was scaled based on the Methodology for the Analysis of a Territory’s Tourist Potential, which stands as a law published in the Official Monitor of the 14th of June 2016. The study indicates that most tourist activity develops in the OMA southern part in Sânmartin commune, thus unsustainably capturing all tourist flows of the rural OMA. Natural and man-made tourist attractions’ territorial concentrations were emphasized in the communes from the south and northern OMA, but there are major territorial dysfunctions in terms of technical endowment and tourist infrastructure supply. The three emerged models refer to the medical–recreational and eco–residential wellness network, discovery eco-holiday, and co-visit and marginal community.

The countries of Eastern Europe represent a particular case from the demographic and economic point of view, as their demographic transition overlapped the economic development process. This represents a major challenge for the sustainability of their health and pension systems and has resulted in reforms and measures to support economic growth and increase the birth rate. Two categories of countries from Eastern Europe were analysed, Romania and Poland as representatives of the ex-Communist countries that joined the European Union and the Russian Federation as representative of the former Soviet Union. The Russian Federation experienced the most profound changes after 1990, being the only country in the Eastern bloc that is close to the generational replacement threshold, the only country with a positive migration balance, but also the only country with the lowest life expectancy.

Metropolitan regions/areas are NUTS 3 regions or a combination of NUTS 3 regions which represent all agglomerations of at least 250,000 inhabitants (Eurostat, 2021). Oradea Metropolitan Area (NUTS3ID RO111) was established in 9th of May 2005 and has a total number of 251.570 inhabitants. The purpose of the association is to stimulate and support the growth and prosperity of the area, focused on the continuous increase of the quality of life. Besides the economic boost, OMA emerged from the need for space and leisure expressed by the core urbanites and although the periurban area is teeming with valuable cultural resources, the latter being the focus of the current study, they are little known by many of the Oradea residents. In this purpose the cultural attractions of the rural OMA were inventoried, analysed and stored in an online open-access database so that tourists can enjoy them and entrepreneurs in tourism can use them as focal points for further tourist infrastructure development. The analysis highlighted the OMA periurban area with the highest cultural attractions’ potential based on the National Methodology regarding the evaluation of the tourist potential in the basic administrative-territorial units.