Romanian Rural World Heritage Sites and Tourism Development

Abstract

The aim of this article is to investigate if Romanian rural localities hosting or situated within a natural WHS (World Heritage Site) have benefited from their situation and developed the local rural tourism. Research Design & Methods: Since the topic of this article had not been previously investigated for Romania, the research was constructed as a case study, exploring the available secondary data on tourism supply and demand. Within the case study, a combination of empirical methods was used in order to investigate two ratios (the survival rate and continuity ratio) constructed to study the sustainability of the offer of local tourism. Findings: Romanian rural localities hosting or being part of a WHS do not exploit properly their tourist potential. However, these localities are in a better position than common rural localities from the viewpoint of a sustainable tourism offer. Implications & Recommendations: Further studies on tourism demand and tourism governance for WHS localities are needed in order to help local governments to develop authentic and sustainable tourism for these areas. Contribution & Value Added: Given the sparse academic Romanian literature focusing on WHSs, this study contributes to this field and opens new avenues for research. Furthermore, the findings of this study add to the existing international literature by supporting the idea that simply the presence of a WHS in rural areas is not a panacea for promoting tourism.

Simulation of the Influence of External Factors on the Level of Use of the Regional Tourism Potential: A Practical Aspect

“…Depending on the availability and development of these components of the tourism potential, different types of tourism arose, in particular: sports (Prokopenko et al 2020;Hindle et al 2021;Escamilla-Fajardo et al 2021), green (Yeoman et al 2015), rural (Ruiz-Rea et al 2020;Shpak et al 2021;Botlíková 2021;Mura and Ključnikov 2018;Pop and Georgescu 2018), wine (Sánchez et al 2017), cultural (Santana-Santana et al 2020, mystical (Kulinyak et al 2020), medical (Dryglas and Lubowiecki-Vikuk 2019;Čabinová et al 2021Čabinová et al ), etc. Chang (2020 describes the development of this industry from aviation tourism to suborbital space tourism, exploring passenger behavior and the range of business opportunities.…”

A Difficult Pattern to Change in Romania, the Perspective of Socio-Economic Development

“…With the depopulation of rural areas, not only is cultural heritage lost [28,29], but food security is also under threat, especially as most food resources are obtained in rural areas [30][31][32]. Even the United Nations proposed that food security should be addressed at international, national, and local levels (Figure 1) [33].…”