Cultural - Religious Tourism in Dobrogea, Romania – Specific and Tendencies

Abstract

The monuments of religious culture spreading within the areal between the Danube River and the Black Sea, that means within the historical province of Dobrogea, represent a great attraction for all those who are interested in getting closer to the first Christians on the territory of Romania. Our study is based upon the analysis of the important historical monuments that exist in this province, on the behavior of the tourists visiting them, as well as on the attitude of the residents in the sense of sustaining the development of the religious tourism. On the methodological perspective, there are followed many aspects, as there is made the empirical analysis of the questionnaires applied to the residents and tourists as well. The results highlight differentiated attraction of the tourists towards the monuments that preserve the traces of the first Christian martyrs, of the religious monuments bearing outstanding spiritual value as compared to the ones destined to religious service only. Their old age and spirituality contribute to the amplification of the pilgrimage phenomenon and to the increase of the numbers of touristic visits, especially for the tourist coming for the first time in those places. The role of the residents should get bigger and bigger in maintaining this phenomenon, which is a thing which people are less conscious about. Therefore, the tourism-purposed infrastructure does not have the same upheaving evolution. The two elements, the religious attraction relying in the number of tourists who visit the religious monuments of Dobrogea, on the first hand, and the accommodation structures, the public food service providers, as well as the number of employees functioning in the tourism sector of the referred province, on the other hand, they both present different evolution trends.