Tourism Potential for Regional Development in the North-East Region of Romania

In the Neamţ County, tourism is an important component of local economy. This area is well known for its natural attractions, historical and cultural heritage. The leisure facilities, besides local traditions, well promoted through tourism marketing activities, can lead to the increase in the number of national and foreign tourists, with positive effects for the local population directly or indirectly implied in tourism activities. In this paper, we make an analysis of tourist traffic in the resort spa Durău, situated in the Neamţ County, by calculating the most representative tourism indicators: daily average number of tourists, the number of overnight stays, average length of stay, tourist traffic density and capacity utilization coefficient of accommodation, and other indicators. The results indicate the high region tourism potential.


Introduction
Tourism as a form of leisure led to the development of regions, independent of the form that it takes: business travel, leisure seaside or mountain tourism, or other forms.In the mountain of the North East Region of Development, tourism has a special role for people's recovery and relaxation, through socio-cultural and hiking activities.From the economic point of view, tourism generates a significant increase in the localities budget, and creates new jobs.Mountain areas are targets for investors and tour operators through their various tourism opportunities.They are targeting their offer for different types of tourists, as employees, retired people or students.
Studies show that visitors have in mind more than a trip in to the mountains and they actually look for diversity, new cultural, educational experiences and other recreational forms of tourism (Bostan C-tin, Costachi Cristina, 2008).As Dobroţeanu and Lădaru (2010) said, the approach on long term development of any sector requires a periodical overlook of both the objectives and the methods leading to the accomplishment of these objectives.
One option of tourism in the region is rural tourism which takes a relatively small share among internal and external visitors.The services offered are acceptable, if we consider the balance quality/prices.In these areas, the promoting of rural tourism is made by ANTREC Neamţ, as part of The National Association of Rural, Eco and Cultural Tourism, which is a major operator and promoter of this type of tourism, offering tourism programs and events, accommodation and meals in boarding houses and agro-tourism in the region.This type of tourism is considered to be a true remedy for the busy city life, against noise and stress factors, Romanian villages offering numerous recreational opportunities and knowledge about traditions of the Romanian people (Romeo Creţu Cătălin, 2005).Most hostels are concentrated in Ceahlău-Durău, Filioara-Agapia, Vânători-Neamţ, Viişoara, Vaduri, Farcaşa, Piatra Neamţ, Almaş, Tg.Neamţ, Tupilaţi, and Bicazu Ardelean.

The Research Method
We selected the resort Durău from Neamţ County as the interest area of this paper.Besides region documents regarding marketing plans for integrated tourism development, we studied statistical data on tourist flows provided by The Romanian National Institute of Statistics, local statistic source and we surveyed local authorities' opinions regarding regions' development opportunities related to tourism and agrotourism.We also evaluated the degree of capitalization of some representative pensions from the Durău resort.In this respect, intending to determinate the tourist traffic we calculated indicators as: Index of global tourist demand change, Index of domestic and foreign demand variation in time, Indicator of total accommodation capacity evolution, Index of global tourist demand distribution, Index of customer evolution, Index of overnight stay evolution, The evolution of the average length of stay, The evolution of the average length of stay, Customer occupancy indicator, The monthly concentration coefficient, Tourist density indicator in relation to population density, Tourist density indicator in relation to area and "Tourist function" indicator.

The Accommodation Structures in Neamţ County
Between 2007 and 2011 the total accommodation capacity in the Neamţ County has slightly increased from 111 to 122 units.In the 5 years of the study, the highest increase was recorded for the guesthouses, which confirms the orientation for small family tourism business (Table .1).

Table1. The Evolution of Tourist Accommodation Establishments between 2007 and 2011 in Neamţ County
No.

A. Study Case: Pension "House Bella"
The pension House Bella had a positive evolution in the last years, indicated by the increased number of nights spent by tourist in this location.We can see from the analysis that tourism demand grew and the highest growth was recorded in 2011.In 2009 was an increase of 5.87% compared to 2008.In 2010, tourism demand growth had a rate of 1.11%, while the increase of tourism demand in 2011 was 10.47% when the highest value was recorded.

B. Study Case: Pension "Gold"
Pension "Gold" from Durău is one of the most beautiful and interesting places in Romania, a place that has its own magic.
Pension "Gold" is located in the center Durău.
Number and composition of tourists during the period 2009-2011 for the pension "Gold" shows the following values:  The analysis of the 2 pensions, "Casa Bella" and "Gold "shows that these pensions do not value their potential, and they record different trends regarding Romanian and foreign tourists.
function" indicator shows a decline from Year 2009 to Year 2011 by 0.04%.Statistics have shown that most of the tourist attractions in the Neamt County are not fully known and promoted, even if one of the key objectives of local government is to transform Piatra Neamţ and surrounding areas in one of the most important tourist destinations in Romania.
DOI: 10.5171/2014.698849jobs from complementary activities which can enhance tourism, as the development factor of poor local tourism infrastructure.

Table 2 . Evolution of the Number of Tourist Accommodation Units in 2007-2011 Durău
_______________Silviu Beciu and Adelaida Cristina Hontuş (2014), Journal of Eastern Europe Research in Business & Economics, DOI: 10.5171/2014.698849Most of the new tourism accommodation units were built in the Durău resort, where predominates the guesthouses, followed by villas and cottages (Table2).

Table 4 . Average Length of Stay in Neamt County
_______________Silviu Beciu and Adelaida Cristina Hontuş (2014), Journal of Eastern Europe Research in Business & Economics, DOI: 10.5171/2014.698849

Table 5 . Tourism Indicators
Source: Authors` selection