The urban tourism and sustainable development
Author:Mirela Mazilu, Roxana Cristina Marinescu
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Abstract:
In the context of intensifying the efforts towards a sustainable economic
development – development mentally supported by the fact that the changes within a system
draw serious changes into the entire system – as regarding the touristic destinations drawn
into tourism, they are assigned with new, complex tasks.
The tourism was adopted mainly in the last two decades and a half as a strategy of the
economic development in many cities such as Drobeta Turnu Severin, but not without many
questions and debates. The ones who criticized it needed to be explained that the value of
the spent public money may find an answer only after a study of the impact. Given the
prominence of the urban tourism, it is surprising the fact that so few people became
enterprisers and so few could be considered as being worthy of trust. One reason of this
situation may be the fact that tourism is hard to be measured. Anyway, the effects of
tourism are spread along many sectors from the amusements for tourists to the hotels,
shops, transportation and other activities, so that it is even harder to measure the impact it
had. With no doubt, the evaluations of the effect that was generated imply many details,
aspect that asks for money and time.
In fact, there are consistently made researches of small proportions using the simple
soundings or borrowing the results from other cities or generally accepted points of view.
As concerning the evaluation of the strategy that regards the urban tourism, there are many
questions to be asked such as: is the number of visitors growing?; how is this rate of grow
as compared to the national and international one?; how dynamic is the income from
tourism?; in what measure there can be assumed the obtained success to the policies that
were practiced?; etc. Once the answer to these questions was given, the cities will be able
to evaluate the policy which was used and its modification.
The studies regarding the economic impact of tourism are mainly focusing on the entire
tourism industry, though the evaluations may also consider the sector or individual projects
of the investments in this field. The viability of the individual projects is usually studied by
their sponsors before the aimed objective is materialized, no matter if it is a public or
private initiative. The impact analysis may be resumed only to the restricted economic
aspects but also to the ones with larger effects.
In fact, the methodology of the studies regarding the economic impact is relatively easy
to be understood, these studies settling the number of visitors. Secondly, it is determined the
amount of money spent by visitors in the local economy and the future impacts through
multiple effects.