Cozma

TOURISM OFFER IN ROMANIA AND NORTHERN TRANSYLVANIA – TERRITORIAL DISPARITIES
LUJZA TÜNDE COZMA1
1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, 400006, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, e-mail: clujza11@gmail.com.

ABSTRACT. – Tourism Offer in Romania and Northern Transylvania – Territorial Disparities. Explaining spatiality has been in the focus of tourism geographers since the beginnings, and the examination of spatial processes still represents a major challenge for researchers, knowing that there is no segment in the functioning of society in which spatiality is not present. The approach was to consider tourism as a complex spatial phenomenon, in order to explain better its processes. Romanian literature abounds in descriptive research of travel and tourism, discussing quantitative and qualitative issues, attraction classifications, tourism potential and geographic dispersal. However, a serious deficit manifests in explanatory research. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze the territorial disparities in the tourism offer of Romania, in generally and of Northern Transylvania in particularly, in the light of current trends characterizing the national tourism industry. Besides spatial characteristics, this paper also deals with tourism penetration on regional level, and territorial concentration of accommodation capacity in the region of Northern Transylvania. The results show that in the moderately-high saturated destination of Northern Transylvania the accommodation capacity in use is spatially concentrated and only a few localities can be regarded as the strongholds of the accommodation basis. The study brings novel results especially for tourism planning, but also provides a basis for further research.
Keywords: spatial aspects, regional disparities, tourism penetration, territorial concentration, accommodation capacity
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