Research on authorization of agrotouristic pensions in Romania

Abstract

Until 2008, pensions in our country were classified into two categories: rural tourist hostels and city tourist hostels. In terms of legislation, there was no such concept as agrotouristic pension or agrotourism. Only by Order no. 636/2008 the agrotouristic pension was born. The hereby work aims to study the impact of the new legislation with regard to increasing the number of agrotourist hostels. The study was conducted on a sample of 100 representative hostels located in the main agrotourist areas of the country: Bucovina, Neamt, Maramures, Bran, Marginimea Sibiu, Vrancea-Buzău, Danube Delta, Harghita- Covasna, the Apuseni Mountains and Oltenia under Mountain. As we can plainly see, the legal criteria are quite demanding and the needed documents suppose a very stiff bureaucracy if we consider that we are talking only about a minor family business. Out of the 100 studied hostels, only 30 have managed to meet the legal criteria and have been assigned the official status of agro tourist hostels.