Tourism, cultural resources and regional competitiveness: a case study in Romania

Abstract

For many regional economies tourism can offer effective solutions to the question of regional competitiveness. As a niche market, cultural tourism responds at present to a growing demand, more and more travellers ranking arts, heritage and other cultural activities as one of the main reasons of travelling. This paper proposes a case study in Romania, which discusses the current state and the perspectives of cultural tourism development at national and regional level. A special emphasis will be put on the possibility to correlate the policy measures supporting tourism development with those addressing the creation of a competitive specialisation profile, infrastructure improvement, sustainability, institutional capacity building, financial management and control so as to contribute to economic recovery and reducing intra and interregional disparities.