Researches on the impact of the 2011 normative acts on authorising agrotourist guesthouses in Romania

Abstract

In this paper, we aimed at analysing the impact of the normative acts elaborated by the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism in 2011 on authorising agrotourist guesthouses in Romania. The survey targeted the comparative analysis of the minister’s orders in 2008-2010 and of the Minister’s Order No. 1051/2011 regarding the agrotourist guesthouses classification criteria and classification procedure. In the second part of the survey, we performed a comparative analysis of the number of agrotourist guesthouses classified by the ministry in the interval January-June 2010 as compared to 2011. A first conclusion of this survey is represented by the fact that the Minister’s Order issued in 2011 simplified the bureaucracy of authorising agrotourist guesthouses and the other accommodation and public catering units. Practically, according to the new regulations, the authorisation file contains an application and three more documents, as compared to the old requirements, according to which the file was quite sizeable. Through the adopted measures, the interval between the date the standardised statement accompanied by the full classification documentation is submitted and the date the classification certificate is issued is decreased to 30 days. The fulfilment of the classification criteria is verified after the authorisation within the control activities performed by the representatives with specific responsibilities within the central public administration authority responsible in the field of tourism. A second conclusion is that there is an increase in the number of classified agrotourist guesthouses and that they progress from the black tourism market area to that of the authorised, legal tourism.