European Cultural and Touristic Heritage: Sighisoara vs. Verona
Author:Irina-Virginia Dragulanescu, Gabriela Cecilia Stanciulescu, Ion Andrei and Timea-Anca Stan
JEL:M31; L83
DOI:
Keywords:thematic tourism, cultural heritage, historic and architectural value, partnership,
destination branding, marketing
Abstract:
Europe is one of the world’s regions with the largest concentration of heritage sites and is
also the top tourist destination in the world. Even if every European country has a unique
and valuable cultural endowment, the socio-economic evolution of each country led to
differences in their development stage. The hereby paper aims to highlight the importance
of touristic activities in the sustainable development of a touristic area with the help of a
specific form of tourism based on the cultural and historical assets.
The two heritage cities chosen for this study are Sighisoara (Romania) and Verona (Italy),
both enrolled to the World Heritage List based on their outstanding historical and
architectural value.
By using qualitative research methods like the observation and the comparison, but also the
analysis of statistic data regarding the tourist floe in the chosen destinations, this paper tries
to enhance the possibility of partnership between Sighisoara and Verona based on their
comparable medieval and cultural features, highlighting the importance of destination
management know-how exchange and the added value of these heritage cities.
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tourism potential of both cities, but also the
problems they face regarding in from of the short length of tourist stay, coming with a
possible solution of joint destination branding of the two cities and the proposal for two
thematic travel packages designed to promote them on the European market.