Glamping tourism as a sustainable response to the need to reinvigorate domestic tourism

Abstract

Communing with nature and spending quality time in a natural environment as pollution-free as possible is an increasingly popular trend, including in the tourist industry. The restrictions on international travel and the social distancing measures imposed because of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic have led to the appearance and growth of alternative in-country ways of spending one's free time. The purpose of this article is to analyse glamping-type servicesas a way of adapting to the current pandemic by the Romanian tourist sector. The attributes associated with the sustainability of the accommodation units are the most important in the minds of tourists (closeness to nature, peace and relaxation, organic environment, eco-friendly behaviour, ecological practices, ecological activities, social distancing). In Romania's case, the sustainable attributes of these locations and their high degree of safety represented the mobile for choosing them by domestic tourists. The study represents an expansion of models for the evaluation of tourist services by proposing the addition of sustainable attributes. For managerial implications, the article offers some potential development directions for glamping by rethinking the Triple Helix model.