CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING THE EVOLUTION OF AGROTOURISM IN ROMANIA

Abstract

Year after year, statistics prove that tourism in rural areas has made more and more followers. Many reasons are invoked to explain this evolution: the influence of ecological ideas, the desire to evade classic touristic structures, the search for a better quality/price ratio. The European continent represents the tourist region with the strongest integration, both of supply and demand. Tourist traffic in Europe is dominated by 5 large emitting countries: Germany, England, France, the Netherlands and Italy. The new emitting poles of tourist flows are Spain and Japan.

In Romania, rural settlements of the village type have a number of inhabitants that varies between 100 and up to 5000 inhabitants, even more in the case of very large villages.

Most specialists define rural areas as those that have 10-20% of the total area occupied in constructions, the dominant activity is agriculture or forestry and which largely preserves the natural environment and gives the tourist the feeling of a natural, traditional and non-industrialized economy. Also, the number of agro-tourismpensionsincreased from 61 units in 1996 to 1354 units in 2010 and 1991 units in 2023. Correspondingly, the existingtouristaccommodationcapacityhasincreaseddramatically, almost 61 times between 1996 and 2010, from 332 to over 20000 accommodation places, and almost 450 times between 2010 and 2023, from over 20,000 places to 9729,007 agro-touristaccommodation place.