Romanian rural tourism development a case study: rural tourism in Maramures

International Journal of Business Research, July, 2007 by Adina L. Negrusa, Smaranda A. Cosma, Marius Bota

We were interested also to analyze the evolution of capacity of these types of accommodation in the same period of time. Using statistical data about the number of places offered by rural pensions, this evolution is presented in the figure 1. The annual average growth is 31%, higher then the annual average growth of the units' number, due to the fact that the development of rural tourism concentrated on the intensive and sustainable increasing strategies. It can be observed that in 2003 was registered an increasing of the capacity more then double, 51%, which correspond also to the peak of units' number growth. Analyzing the capacity per units resulted that in general a rural tourism boarding house offers an average of 10 places, which means a settlement with an average of 5 rooms. Like we stated before this result means the accommodations offer are at small-scale.

Due to the small-scale of the settlement also the number of accommodations in rural pensions is insignificant comparing with the total number of accommodations, just 1.7%. The evolution of tourists arrivals reflects that the number of foreign tourists which choose rural tourism for their accommodation increasing each year, with an annual average of 28%. This means a continuous increasing interest for the Romanian rural tourism. In general the number of staying overnight in rural pensions, which is approximately 2.7 nights, remained constant without significant differences between internal and foreign tourists. Because of that the indicator of net using tourist accommodation capacity for rural pensions is lower, about 14.6%, comparing with hotel's one of 40%.

Despite of the global development of the Romanian rural tourism, in the last years could be identified a regional disparity. In order to evaluate the disparities development of rural tourism in Romania we made an analysis on the number of units accommodation in rural areas spread on region bases. We take into account the 8 regions of development, created by the National Agency for Regional Development in order to promote a better and an appropriate development of each part of the country. Based on the results we concluded that three region are known for rural tourism and also have the potential to be promoted into the international tourism market. These are Centre (44%), North-West (13.4%) and North-East (12.3%) regions. Also the most important flows of tourists within rural tourism are recorded there.

These regions accumulated an important economical capital in the last years and significant internal and international investments. Other regions and settlements having a high rural tourism potential remain in an uncertainly position on the tourists market because of the weak developed territorial infrastructure, the absence or weak development of the tourist arrangements or due to a weak and unorganized marketing activity.

In the international tourism market until now Romania could not developed a competitive tourist products. Comparing with the neighbour countries based on the foreign tourist arrivals in 2005, Romania came in the 5th position, after Poland, Hungary, Croatia and Czech Republic. It is interesting to remark that 95% from the foreign tourists came from European countries. In the top of the European Union countries which represent the lager tourism market for Romania could be identified: Germany with a market share of 13.49%, Italy with 12.63%, France having a rise of the market share to 8% and United Kingdom at about 5.6% market share.