The Potential And Challenges Of Sustainable Tourism In Romania

When talking about the concepts of tourism potential and heritage tourism, tourism professionals are using different terminologies and concepts, both in form and content. The tourism potential of a given space is defined as "all natural components, cultural-historical, socio-demographic, technical and economic, scientifically recognized, quantitatively, qualitatively, proven through practice and showing the possibilities for tourism and give specific functionality for tourism, to the extent that it provides natural tourism resources, whose recovery amid technical and tourist facilities in the context of protecting the environment, can cause a tourism activity, allowing its entry into the tourist circuit. "1 In other words, a territory is important in terms of tourism to the extent that can provide, by exploiting tourism resources in the context of protecting the natural environment and can develop a tourist activity, giving its option to enter into a travel circuit. Regarding to identify and establish scientific data about some components of tourism potential, this paper shows that it is necessary to use interdisciplinary research and tourism resources can be fructified only after experts in the field have given their consent. Components of tourism potential, both natural and anthropogenic ones are considered by some experts as attractions and tourist resources. The two terms, their contents differ from each other. While "tourist attraction" is the affective component of the tourist potential, "tourist resource" refers more to the economic aspect of it.