Cultural Tourism Market în Roumania - Bucovina

'Cultural tourism' (or culture tourism) is the subset of tourism concerned with a country or region's culture, especially its arts. It generally focuses on traditional communities who have diverse customs, unique form of art and distinct social practices, which basically distinguishes it from other types/forms of culture. Cultural tourism includes tourism in urban areas, particularly historic or large cities and their cultural facilities such as museums and theatres. It can also include tourism in rural areas showcasing the traditions of indigenous cultural communities (i.e. festivals, rituals), and their values and lifestyle. It is generally agreed that cultural tourists spend substantially more than standard tourists do. This form of tourism is also becoming generally more popular throughout Europe.

Tourism in Romania focuses on the country's natural landscapes and its rich history.

The evaluation of Romania’s tourist patrimony has been based on a comprehensive activity of tourist zoning that was first developed in 1975-1977 and then periodically updated. Considering tourism as a system at national scale it has aimed at establishing a model for evaluating, constructing a hierarchy and proposing the most suitable ways of turning to good account the tourist patrimony. Multiple criteria have been used in order to delimit the tourist zones and to propose the priority actions in each specific case. As a result, a wide range of tourist zones have been identified, some of them of a particular importance to the European and world’s natural and cultural heritage.

Thus, the natural patrimony includes the Delta of Danube, the Romanian shore of the Black Sea, the Romanian Carpathians, North Oltenia, Banat area, the Danube Valley and so on. The most representative areas for the cultural heritage are North Moldova (with monasteries and churches declared world’s heritage by UNESCO), the medieval core of Brasov and Sibiu cities in Transilvania, the medieval fortress of Sighisoara – also in Transilvania (the only one still inhabited in Europe), Bucharest and its surroundings, the Greek, Dacian and Roman archeological sites in Dobrogea and Transilvania, the neolithic archeological sites in Moldova – most of them located in extremely attractive areas from natural beauty viewpoint as well.

An important characteristics of Romania’s natural and cultural-historic patrimony is its relatively well-balanced territorial distribution that has a particular significance especially for the lagging regions, with other economic activities less developed.

The number of tourists is growing every year and tourism is becoming an increasingly important source for Romania's GDP with 6-7 million people now visiting yearly. Romania's economy is characterized by a huge potential for tourism. Number of tourists grew from 4.8 million in 2002 to 6.6 million in 2004. Similarly, the revenues grew from 400 million in 2002 to 607 in 2004.[1] Tourism in Romania attracted €880 million in investments in 2005.[2]

Tourism is a significant contributor to the Romanian economy. In the 1990s the government heavily promoted the development of skiing in the Romanian Carpathians. Domestic and international tourism generates about 4% of gross domestic product (GDP) and 0.8 million jobs. Following commerce, tourism is the second largest component of the services sector. In 2006 Romania registered 20 million overnight stays by international tourists, 4% higher than in the previous year and an all-time record. Two-thirds of all major trade fairs from Central Europe are held in Romania, and each year they attract 2 to 3 million business travelers, about 20% of whom are foreigners. The four most important trade fairs take place in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Iaşi, Timişoara.

In the year 2006, 14,122,798 tourists vacationed in Romania. The total revenue was $4.2 billion and with an average expenditure of $679 per tourist. Over the years, Romania has emerged as a popular tourist destination for many Europeans, often competing with Greece, Italy and Spain. Romania destinations such as Constanta and Mamaia (sometimes called the Romanian Riviera) have become very popular among European tourists.

The number of foreign tourists entering Romania grew by 7.9% in August 2008, compared to August 2007, National Statistics Institute (INS) data inform.

As many as 959,400 tourists, arrived in Romania in August this year, by 4.3% more than in the same month of the year before. The Romanian tourists numbered 82.7% while the foreign ones were 17.3% of the total, in Aug 2008, figures quite near to those recorded in Aug 2007.

As many as 70.6% of the total number of the tourists were lodged in accommodation units, namely by 2.6% more than in Aug 2007.

Most of the 1.097 million foreign tourists who entered Romania in Aug 2008, came from European countries (95.3%), 63% from EU states, and most of these arrived from Hungary (31.5%), Bulgaria (15.1%), Germany (11%), Poland (8.9%) and Italy (7.7%).

About 1.7 million Romanians traveled abroad in Aug 2008, by 27.5% more than in the same month in 2007, and 81.8% of them chose traveling by car or by coaches, 8.873 million Romanians, being registered at the Romanian border checkpoints in Aug 2008,namely by 21.8 more than during the same month of the previous year.

As regards the tourist supply a slow upward trend has been recorded especially since 2003: in 2005 it reached 283,194 places/accommodation beds, representing an increase of 2.63% compared to 2000 (Table 1 and Figure 1).

Table 1. Dynamics of tourist accommodation capacity

Accommodation

Capacity

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

TOTAL 100.00% 98.94% 87.56% 112.79% 100.85% 102.63%

Hotels and motels 100.00% 99.92% 99.50% 100.14% 101.49% 100.12%

Tourist chalets 100.00% 94.37% 77.47% 79.79% 77.97% 74.77%

Urban tourist

boarding houses 100.00% 117.55% 136.94% 177.35% 253.36% 341.26%

Rural tourist

boarding houses 100.00% 133.97% 175.76% 211.91% 265.38% 314.64%

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Romania, National Institute of Statistics, Bucharest, 2005, p. 721-740

Source: Statistical Yearbook of Romania, National Institute of Statistics, Bucharest, 2005, p. 721-740

During the restructuring process, accompanied by the facility modernisation, an important increase has been noticed in the case of urban and rural tourist boarding houses which have been developed within a complex sustainable development programme. In particular, rural tourism is seen as a priority way of turning to good account the natural resources and local traditions. The two mentioned categories represented approximately 5% of the tourist accommodation supply in 2005.

The most important part of the accommodation capacity is located in the Black See shore – Constanta area. The rest of it is quite evenly distributed by development region (Figure 2).