Abstract
Winter sports are the main attraction for many tourist areas in Romania, contributing significantly to the development of local economies. Based on this, the study aims to analyze the ski areas in Romania, as well as the extent to which they contribute to the sustainable development of the local economy. This is particularly important as, in recent decades, climate change has significantly affected winter sports, especially skiing. Thus, an analysis of the physical characteristics of ski runs in Romania (number, length, width, level difference and slope) is accompanied with an analysis on the dynamics of the share of tourism in the local economy of winter sport locations, based on tourism turnover relative to total turnover in the local economy. Both graphic and cartographic methods were used in this study, based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data available for ski slopes in Romania and the host localities. We used ArcGIS 10.6 software for the preparation of graphical representations and other software to process large databases. The research results showed a great diversity regarding counties, localities and ski slopes depending on the characteristic features of ski slopes (number, length, width, level difference and slope). In our study, the evolution of the share of turnover in tourism in terms of total turnover presented several categories of localities based on their economic dependence on winter sports; the impact in this regard was found to be very differentiated between localities.
Highlights
Mountain tourism is one of the most common types of tourist activities and appeals to tourists due to the spectacular landscapes, unique natural beauty, wildlife, fresh air, cultural landscape and various types of landforms that are available [1,2,3]
The necessary information for the current study was collected from the webpages of the National Authority for Tourism [33], “i-Tour Schi”, “which is a national project to promote certified ski slopes across the country” [34], and of other bodies involved in the promotion of ski slopes and weather conditions for practicing winter sports in Romania [35,36], capturing the existing facts at the end of year 2020
The turnover was used as an indicator for the analysis of the share of tourism in the local economy, for all territorial administrative units in Romania with systematized ski areas, the share of turnover in tourism in total turnover of the local economy was analyzed for the period 2000 to 2018
Summary
Mountain tourism is one of the most common types of tourist activities and appeals to tourists due to the spectacular landscapes, unique natural beauty, wildlife, fresh air, cultural landscape and various types of landforms that are available [1,2,3]. Winter sports are among the most popular activities in mountain areas and are key factors for the booming development of mountain tourism in recent decades [6,7,8]. Sustainability 2021, 13, 13698 sports, skiing represents a central element through which an entire industry has developed, acting as one of the most spectacular types of tourism activity [11,12,13]. In this regard, to meet the demand, the specific infrastructure for practicing winter sports has experienced a similar evolution. 27.91% of the landform units are characterized by mountains and depressions, of which approximately 90% have heights suitable for winter sports of under m [15,16,17]
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