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    STUDIA GEOGRAPHIA - Issue no. 1 / 2009  
         
  Article:   THE DEVELOPMENT OF RURAL TOURISM THROUGH THE SAPARD PROGRAMME. A THEORETICAL VIEW.

Authors:  DIANA ALEXANDRU.
 
       
         
  Abstract:  

The Development of Rural Tourism through the SAPARD Programme. A Theoretical View. The process of studying the applicability of the policy of rural tourism development through the European funds allocated for rural development programmes functions on the basis of an entirely different mechanism than the one that guides the approach of financing from the standpoint of rural tourism development as known so far. Up to now, this has been the trend used in qualifying the main policy of development of rural communities that stand at the extreme opposite margins of economic progress. In the new above mentioned approach, the rural communities, subjects of the analysis, are selected either in accordance with their low level of development, thus being included in the category of less favoured areas, or in accordance with their higher level of economic development, that allows the focusing on the role tourism practices have in their local socio-economic evolution, more or less becoming their main economic activity. Therefore, by the end of such a financing programme, tourism development should become a priority policy, not only a priority axis, element of a national rural development policy, considering the population’s attitude towards the evolution of this economic sector in certain areas of the national territory. This becomes an issue of maximum importance, having in view that the decision-making factor is represented by the rural community itself, the individuals or family associations, which indirectly depends on the financing opportunities it has been offered. Consequently, the community was more or less guided towards specific directions, either by the extent of information promoted and given by the official authorities at a national, regional and county level and absorbed by the communities at a local level about the priorities set by the national and regional plans and strategies of development, or by the financial facilities offered through the European Programmes for Rural Development in the pre-accession period. Presently, rural tourism may not be considered a phenomenon similar to the classical form of tourism anymore, as appreciated by most of the specialists in the field. Nevertheless, it can be considered a sum of all other existing and practicable types and forms of tourism. The only delimitation we can perceive is that established between rural and urban, in which case, any other type and form of tourism is being transferred to the field of alternative economic activities within the rural space. Assessing the impact of the SAPARD financing Programme at a national level supposes a cumulative analysis resulting in quite positive effects. The verified differences of scale stress upon punctual growths, which cannot set forth the process of economic development, at a locality and at a communal level, but rather cause the appearance of income stimuli that grow weaker within a general underdeveloped economic background, counterbalance the classical perspective, since the gradual growth of the analysed territorial level determines concentrations of financial input, which provide economic growth, new jobs, and other premises of economic development.

Keywords: rural development policy, the SAPARD Programme, rural tourism, agritourism.

 
         
     
         
         
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