Promoting Dobrogea region as a constituent part of the 'Silk Road' – an engine for socio–economic and cultural cooperation in the globalization context

Cultural tourism has experienced a rapid growth, along with a comparable diversification of cultural patterns. The potential of development for this economy sector can be huge. There are specific patterns for every culture and that is why cultural tourism is an inexhaustible source of tourism resources. Cultural tourism represents, along with trade, a vector of knowledge, exchange and tempering for the relations between nations. In this sense the 'Silk Road' program promoted by UNESCO represents an example of cooperation and intercultural exchange, being also an engine of growth for the regions included in the program. Dobrogea, as a land situated at the junction of great empires, subject to social, economic, political and even geological changes can offer us, at the beginning of the third millennium, important disclosures for the world history. The purpose of this paper is to militate for including Dobrogea in the UNESCO program of preserving and promoting the “Silk Road” tourism product. Even if now Dobrogea is not part of the 'Silk Road' destinations, available evidence support our proposition on the necessity of a more thorough research in order to find new information to support this theory. Our research examines the manner in which promoting Dobrogea as part of the “Silk Road” destination can be a value for the UNESCO program and also for the local economy. This can represent a resource worth developing through a public - private partnership between the tourism industry, largely privatized and the Ministry of Culture. Through a medium and long term strategy, a sustained promotional campaign, this hypothesis could be proven if a part of the revenue generated from tourism would be invested in culture. This paper is an exploratory research, based on data and studies on the importance of promoting Dobrogea region as part of UNESCO 'Silk Road' program.