Abstract:
The constantly growing number of travel destinations and the
enhanced quality of existing ones put great pressure on those responsible for
a given destination to find better ways to compete in the tourism marketplace
and to do so in a sustainable manner. Consequently, a necessary first step in
achieving this goal would be to better understand those forces and success
factors that determine the competitiveness of major tourism destinations.
Success factors of a specific destination can then be enhanced if applied to a
specific tourism product that could achieve sustainable growth over the
longer term. The objective of this paper is to present an analysis on
Romania’s competitiveness as a tourism destination, based on Porter’s
diamond model. Throughout the analysis, we focus on the most competitive
export products in the industry and their prospects for future growth. As the
investigation reveals that opportunities exist for rural tourism in Romania,
and due to the special relevance of agritourism in our country, where the
transformation of rural space is accelerated by the process of integration
into the European Union, we further channel the competitiveness assessment
on this specific tourism product. We find that agritourism allows for a
diversification of components of rural economies, which would otherwise be
condemned to disappear, entailing high human and economic costs. It also
allows to maintain, to protect and even to enhance our heritage and
patrimony. We conclude that agritourism can make a valuable contribution
to rural economies, and provide several potential benefits. A sustainable
development of agritourism is likely to generate: job retention and creation,
farm support, landscape conservation, support to rural arts and crafts,
nature conservation, environmental improvements, and enhanced role of
local communities.
