The Romanian Agrotourism Over the Last Two Decades: Good Old Places or New Attractions?

Abstract

Tourism represents an important economic activity for most of the countries all around the world. For Romania also, tourism plays an extremely important role in the economic development, contributing with 5.2% to GDP and with more than 500,000 for total employment, according to the 2017 WTTC report. Starting with the year 2000, the Romanian rural tourism and agrotourism, have seen a significant development in terms of infrastructure and services quality, political attention, legislative climate and qualified staff. In order to highlight the dynamics of Romanian agrotourism and to deliver insights about the greatest challenges of this activity in rural areas, the paper investigated the main offer and demand regional indicators of agro-tourist activity in Romania during the period 2000-2016, using the empirical data provided by the National Institute of Statistics.