ROMANIA VERSUS BULGARIA: A SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE COMPETITIVENESS OF SEASIDE TOURISM

Mihai Costea,Cristian Valentin Hapenciuc,Gabriela Arionesei

doi:10.12955/cbup.v4.800

Mihai Costea, Cristian Valentin Hapenciuc + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.12955/cbup.v4.800

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Abstract

This research compares tourism competitiveness of two neighboring countries, Romania and Bulgaria, which have many similarities economically as well as from a geopolitical and historical perspective. Despite these similarities, immediately after the 1990s, which marked the fall of the communist regime, the tourism phenomenon in the two countries had divergent evolutions. As the tourism industry in Bulgaria, especially its seaside tourism, underwent unprecedented development, the tourism activity in Romania systematically lost its competitiveness. The factors affecting the appearance and increase of such a difference are of interest to the Romanian seaside tourism. To generate the answer to this problem, we perform a series of comparative analyses with data from the World Economic Forum, in terms of the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report (2011-2015), `the National Authority for Tourism of Romania, and the National Institute of Statistics from Romania and Bulgaria. We identified a series of constitutive elements relating to the success of the Bulgarian seaside tourism and a sequence of deficiencies in the strategic and organizational maneuvers of the tourism activity at the Romanian seaside.

Highlights

The dynamism of the tourism industry and the freedom of markets in the industry favor the fresh capital infusions in new geographical zones with a strong tourism potential that lead to an unprecedented development of the tourism activity and their holiday destinations (Boșcoianu, Costea, & Codreanu, 2015, p. 85)
At the general level, countries with advanced economies can impose a dominant position in the tourism market, because of the competitive advantages sustained by their general level of development and the volume of public and private investments in their tourism industry and connected fields
Because seaside tourism represents a basic form of tourism activity in both Romania and Bulgaria, we considered it appropriate to narrow the sphere of research and focus exclusively on this segment

Summary

Introduction

The dynamism of the tourism industry and the freedom of markets in the industry favor the fresh capital infusions in new geographical zones with a strong tourism potential that lead to an unprecedented development of the tourism activity and their holiday destinations (Boșcoianu, Costea, & Codreanu, 2015, p. 85). Investment, cumulated with a series of strategies, legislation favorable to the development of tourism, and a marketing policy adapted to a rapidly changing market and in which tourists become more demanding every day, will lead to an organic increase in the number of players in the industry. This includes public and private organizations with a tourism profile in receiving countries and, inevitably, will result in internal and external competition. A series of developing countries have gradually emerged and are beginning to recover systematically from the differences registered at the level of performance in tourism and on different axes of competitiveness

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