Sustainable Tourism – An Economic Reviving Alternative of the Under-Developed Areas. Case Study – Straja Resort

The tourism development of an area is an ongoing process of designing tourism facilities, the renewal of the existing ones, their dimensioning according to the changes of the tourism demand and supply and most important rendering the tourism activity efficient. According to the realities of the geographical space, the focus of the present study rivets on differentiating certain typologies and principles of tourism development in an area strongly affected by the economic streamlining following the effects that the tourism development has had upon the social and economic reality of the area. Apart from the analysis of the development of the Straja resort, the author realized a diagnostic analysis of the territory underlining the favourable agents for tourism activities, and in the same time the necessary steps that need to be taken in order to ensure the optimal development of the area. The detailed analysis included a series of parameters among which we name a few: number of sky slopes, length of the sky slopes (total and for each category), tourists transport to the sky slopes using the cable transport equipment as well as other auxiliary equipment. In order to dimension this resort, and according to its tourism potential, the optimal accommodation capacity was calculated, the indicator that represents the tourism frequency that a regional socio-economic system can permanently support without suffering any irreparable changes to its structure.