rural tourism and livelihood strategies in romania

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Monica Iorio

Andrea corsale.

Romania Rural tourism Guesthouses Development Livelihood strategies

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Rural tourism and livelihood strategies in romania.

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The evolution of Romanian agritourism and the role of European Union subsidies in rural areas

Following the collapse of the communist regime in Romania, there has been an intense growth in the number of farms providing holiday accommodation, which has gone to answer the tourism flows from other European countries that have increased significantly, particularly since 2009. The core purpose of this study was to estimate, through a quantitative approach, the main relationships between decoupled payments and other financial subsidies allocated by the European Union in the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the growth of Romanian agritourism. The findings reveal that, over the 2007–2016 period, decoupled payments more than financial subsidies allocated under the second pillar of the CAP have acted to encourage the growth of agritourism in the Romanian countryside. This has corroborated the crucial role that direct payments and other financial subsidies have played in stimulating diversification in Romanian farms and, at the same time, reducing the levels of permanent emigration from rural villages as well.

1 Introduction

Since the uprising of 1989 that led to the downfall of the communist regime led by Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania has suffered from an intense permanent emigration, predominantly from rural areas and depressed villages located in disadvantaged rural territories. In fact, the phenomenon of permanent rural out-emigration towards urban areas or abroad to other European countries has been a characteristic of many eastern European countries after the disintegration of the Iron Curtain, even if the primary sector has, in some cases, acted as a buffer to reduce the levels of socio-economic marginalisation of rural areas in these countries (Bojnec et al. 2003 ; Petrick and Tyran 2003 ; Petrick and Weingarten 2004 ; Galluzzo 2017 , 2018 ). Recent quantitative studies have underlined the prominent role that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has had in mitigating the incidence of rural emigration by encouraging multifunctionality and diversification in the farming sector in many European countries (Rizov 2005 ; Galluzzo 2017 ). This diversification of on-farm activities has come about as a necessary response to the income squeeze in farming that has followed the fall in prices of the main agricultural commodities in the international markets. The transition away from an agro-centric, productivist model that has stimulated this greater multifunctionality has led to a post-productivist and peri-productivist model which has seen farms diversify into agritourism and rural tourism in which the countryside itself, as much as the agricultural yield, is the new commodity, resulting in a new paradigm of the rural economy (Ilbery 1998 ; Van der Ploeg et al. 2002 ; Rizov 2005 ; Ward et al. 2008 ; Copus 2014 ; Galluzzo 2017 ). Meanwhile, partly as a consequence of political pressures and also reflective of greater financial constraints, the Agenda 2000 reforms have seen a radical reallocation of the European Union (EU) budget, with a shrinking of the financial subsidies allocated to agriculture through the framework of the CAP in recent years, and a greater recognition of the role of rural areas in a shared and complete process of rural development (Swinbank and Daugbjerg 2006 ; Alexandri and Luca 2008 ; Erjavec et al. 2011 ; Vieri 2012 ; Burja and Burja 2014 ; Erjavec and Erjavec 2015 ; Galluzzo 2018 ).

In relation to the rural condition in Romania, comparing the socio-economic statistical data from all Romanian regions, the situation is quite uneven corroborating the existence of marked territorial discrepancies. In fact, the findings reveal that the Bucharest-Ilfov region has the lowest proportion of people at risk of severe deprivation and has suffered less than other regions from permanent emigration. In contrast, in the Eastern and Southern regions, and in other areas where agriculture still represents a pivotal and vital economic sector, such as in the counties and rural villages close to the Moldavian border, the level of permanent emigration has been intense, leading to remarkable levels of socio-economic marginalisation and appreciable territorial disparities (Surd et al. 2011 ; Galluzzo 2018 ).

Before the enlargement of the EU in 2007, the European Commission activated various initiatives aimed at financially supporting lagging-behind Romanian rural areas in order to boost the infrastructural endowment. In this vein, studies conducted by Surd et al. ( 2011 ) and Galluzzo ( 2018 ) have both stressed the importance of adjusting the financial allocations to Romanian farmers from the EU within the framework of the Rural Development Programme. In fact, considering that the poorer a rural area is, the more modest is its socio-economic development, it is important to promote a different allocation of direct payments and decoupled subsidies among European countries, defining some priorities in the pattern of local economic growth in rural territories (Surd et al. 2011 ; Galluzzo 2017 , 2018 ). According to these authors, a greater targeting of support to disadvantaged areas in the framework of multifunctionality can act to mitigate socio-economic disparities, with indirect consequences in improving the environmental protection and increasing the sustainability of rural territories (Iorio and Corsale 2010 ; Abrham 2011 ; Antonescu 2012 ; Burja and Burja 2014 ; Galluzzo 2017 ).

Rural areas, through their diversification into agritourism and rural tourism, can play a major role in protecting the environment and raising the income levels of local populations, thus partially solving the issue of permanent emigration. As such, certain non-traditional and non-codified services such as agritourism must be adequately encouraged with financial support allocated through the second pillar of the CAP, which seeks to merge the diversification of farm activity with environmental protection in rural areas. This outlook corroborates the new paradigm of rural development investigated by Van der Ploeg in his so-called “New Peasantries” model (Westhoek et al. 2006 ; Van der Ploeg 2010 ).

The growth of agritourism in Romania is not entirely a recent phenomenon, as it has long represented a specific tool to leverage socio-economic development in certain mountain areas where agritourism began in the early 1960s (Ciolac et al. 2011 ; Matei 2015 ), where opportunities for skiing are combined with other localised leisure activities. This enabled some, fortunately endowed, rural villages to survive by exploiting their available resources, thus avoiding the endogenous process of rural depopulation and pauperisation. Since 2007, however, there has been a marked increase in the presence of agritourisms in Romania, owing to specific financial subsidies allocated by the Rural Development Programme. This support, financed through the second pillar of the CAP and the LEADER initiatives, is aimed at stimulating, through a bottom-up approach, an endogenous and cohesive rural development underpinned by pilot initiatives of self-entrepreneurship to act as levers for an environmental and social protection.

One of the main reasons for the rapid expansion of Romanian agritourism is significantly due to certain intrinsic features of its territory and of its social fabric that make this a particularly apt business model. The small-sized family farms that represent the overwhelming majority of the farming sector are possessed with a high level of specific skills and innovation, and so are ideally suited to exploiting a growing market demand for a new typology of slow tourism able to emphasise traditions and local foods, giving them a fair non-codified value (Pirnea et al. 2012 ) in the framework of rural idyllic space (Bell 2006 ; Short 2006 ; Dincă and Teodorescu 2015 ; Galluzzo 2016 ).

Focusing attention on the growth of agritourism in all Romanian regions and on the pivotal role of tourist flows and the endowment of attractions, many authors have highlighted that the South-Eastern and Central Romanian regions, where there are many tourist attractions, have had a direct effect in polarising touristic flows. Nevertheless, overall, Romania registers the lowest competitiveness index value compared to neighbouring countries such as Bulgaria, Poland and Croatia (Bran et al. 2010 ), despite the ready availability of bunches of services and activities in Romanian agritourisms and tourist villages that are able to satisfy the demanding needs of guests (Creţu et al. 2015 ).

2 Objective of the study

The key objective of this research was to assess, through a quantitative approach, the main relationships between the financial subsidies and other decoupled payments allocated under the first and second pillars of the CAP and the growth of agritourism in all Romanian regions in the period from 2007 to 2017.

For this analysis, the research has utilised data published by the EU in a sample of farms in different countries that are included in the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN), as well as data regarding tourism published by the Romanian Institute of Statistics (INSSE) in its TEMPO time series. The data have been elaborated using the latest version of the XLSTAT software.

3 Results and discussion

The main findings regarding tourist flows have shown a significant and consistent increase in arrivals over the period of study, predominantly coming from other European countries ( Figure 1 ), even if the overall tourism was notably affected by the recent global economic crisis, particularly in the period from 2008 to 2010. Following Romania’s entry into the EU in 2007, the statistical data of arrivals showed a sharp rise until the time of the crisis, and this upward trend has been particularly stark again over the 3-year period from 2014 to 2016.

Total tourist arrivals in Romania from all countries for the period 2000–2016 (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/#/pages/tables/insse-table ).

Focusing attention on tourist flows, there has been a fairly intense growth in arrivals from Asia since 2011 ( Figure 2 ), whilst arrivals from Australia and Oceania have remained relatively stable over the entire period. In contrast, arrivals from North America have seen an almost constant growth, with some fluctuation only over the 3-year period from 2014 to 2016. In absolute terms of number of non-European tourist arrivals, there has been a predominance of arrivals from Asia for most of the period of study, with only the exception of 2005–2006 and 2014 when brief surges of arrivals from North America slightly eclipsed those from Asia.

Total tourist arrivals in Romania from non-European countries for the period 2000–2016 (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/#/pages/tables/insse-table ).

Regarding accommodation, the recent statistical data published by the Romanian Institute of Statistics for the period from 2000 reveal a significant growth of facilities. In particular, the offer of farm-based agritourism accommodation has increased from less than 500 units registered in the year 2000 to more than 2,500 units registered in the year 2017 ( Figure 3 ).

Number of agritourism boarding houses in Romania over the period of study (source: author’s elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro:8077/tempo-online/#/pages/tables/insse-table ).

Turning the focus of the investigation to financial support, in current values, the average value of subsidies and decoupled payments allocated under the first and second pillars of the CAP has been remarkably uneven ( Figure 4 ), seeing a generally downward trend over the period from 2007, albeit with a brief period of increase from 2010 to 2013. Moreover, over the current 7-year period of the CAP programme (2014–2020), preliminary data show that there has been a sharp increase in subsidies and other decoupled payments in the first pillar of the CAP; by contrast, the amount of financial supports to the rural development in the framework of the second pillar of the CAP has been on average under 100 euro per farms.

Average value of financial subsidies allocated under the first and second pillars of the Common Agricultural Policy to Romanian farms (source: author’s own elaboration on data https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rica/database/database_en.cfm ).

The growth in agritourism during the time of investigation seems to be correlated directly with the variable people emigrated from Romania and correlated indirectly to the variables Gross Domestic Product (GDP) produced by agriculture and employed people ( Table 1 ). The Pearson coefficient considering also the impact of the total financial subsidies allocated by the CAP (CAP subsidies) has pointed out a direct correlation between the total CAP subsidies and agritourism; hence, an increase in financial aids to Romanian farms is able to stimulate a significant growth of agritourism in Romania ( Table 2 ).

Main correlations in some socio-economic variables and agritourism in Romania since 2000–2016 (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro )

*** significance < 1%, ** significance at 1–5%.

Main correlations in some socio-economic variables, agritourism in Romania and financial subsidies allocated by the CAP since 2000–2016 (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro and https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rica/database/database_en.cfm )

The research findings have corroborated that the higher the permanent emigration from Romanian regions, the higher the growth of agritourism, which provides an effective lever for partially solving the socio-economic marginalisation of Romanian rural areas. In fact, agritourism represents a good opportunity for rural territories where agriculture is deeply rooted in terms of GDP produced in the primary sector. In fact, agritourism in Romania can have a positive effect in reducing unemployment or, rather, it has been seen to have a positive impact in areas where the level of unemployment is high generating some modest job opportunities. This corroborates the view that agriculture can have a buffer role, specifically in terms of diversified on-farm activities such as agritourism, and can help in solving unemployment and, thus, the socio-economic marginalisation of rural areas, as other scholars in different European countries have also argued (Bojnec et al. 2003 ; Petrick and Tyran 2003 ; Petrick and Weingarten 2004 ; Galluzzo 2017 , 2018 ). In sparsely Romanian rural villages where it is difficult to find a job without emigrating, agritourism represents a unique possibility to diversify the farmer’s income and a consequent natural reaction for some people who decide not to emigrate.

In regards to the stated aim of the study, to estimate the direction and the link between financial subsidies allocated by the CAP and the development of Romanian agritourism, the research findings have underlined a negative and indirect relationship between the variable financial subsidies allocated under the first pillar of the CAP and the variables total assets, farm net income and agritourism ( Figure 5 ).

Main correlations in all investigated variables for all Romanian regions (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro and https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rica/database/database_en.cfm ).

Comparing different Romanian regions, findings have pointed out as in Bucharest-Ilfov the impact of financial subsidies allocated by the second pillar of the CAP has not been significant ( Figure 6 ). In the North-East region, the financial subsidies allocated by the second pillar of the CAP did not produce any effects; by contrast, in South-East, South-West-Oltenia and South-Mountenia the correlation has been positive; hence, the financial supports in the framework of the rural development have had a significant and direct impact in Romania.

Main correlations in all investigated variables in different Romanian regions (source: author’s own elaboration on data available at http://statistici.insse.ro and https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rica/database/database_en.cfm ).

At the same time, other research outcomes underline a weak but indirect correlation between the variables farm net income and agritourism in Romania; hence it can be said, the lower the net income in farms, the higher the number of farms offering agritourism activities to diversify their own on-farm activities. Very weak correlations have been found between the variables agritourism and total assets, and payments or other financial supports allocated by the Rural Development Programme. This seems to corroborate the view that the level of endowments and previous investments in Romanian farms did not imply any effects on the choice of farmers to diversify on-farm activity through agritourism; furthermore, the research finding showed either no effect, or only a faint effect, of financial subsidies allocated in the framework of the second pillar of the CAP on the growth of agritourism in Romania, even if findings have pointed out some significant and ambiguous differences among Romanian regions underlining direct correlations of the second pillar towards the agritourism’s growth.

4 Conclusion

The funding and other specific initiatives provided by the EU have had an ambiguous effect on the growth of agritourism in Romania. Specifically, in fact, the findings show that whilst the financial subsidies allocated under the first pillar of the CAP have had an effect on the development of agritourism, the subsidies disbursed under the second pillar of the CAP have had no unique effects in all investigated Romanian regions. In fact, in regions where the agriculture is an important sector a positive and direct effect has been estimated between second pillar financial subsidies allocated by the CAP and the growth of agritourism, even if summing the effect of these two variables in all Romanian regions the value of the correlation has been quite weak.

The main insights offered by this study for policymakers are very significant, emphasising that agritourism can offer an adequate tool for rural areas to reduce their socio-economic marginalisation, and represent a good opportunity for territories that have suffered an intense rural permanent out-emigration.

For the planning of the next period of the CAP, decision-makers and other stakeholders should seek to stimulate the growth of on-farm diversification into activities such as agritourism and rural tourism, in the light of significant increases in tourist arrivals, even if the growth of tourism is sensitive to many exogenous factors, as was the case with Romanian tourism in relation to the economic crisis of 2008–2010.

Summing up, it is important to provide subsidies to farmers with the specific purpose of stimulating multifunctionality, and in this regard the pilot initiatives financed under the LEADER programme seem to be ideally suited to small rural villages, in that they are able to stimulate the improvement of accommodation facilities that, simultaneously, responds to the growing demands of tourism whilst generating sources of income for local inhabitants whilst also enhancing and protecting the environment, all based on a bottom-up approach that is able to answer to the real needs of rural communities. The agritourism also has a positive and sustainable environmental fingerprint because it is addressed in recovering and restoring old buildings in farms which are not used anymore in protecting the rural space. In fact, in many European countries the law does not allow to build new houses for agritourism. Furthermore, by a specific process of waste management it is possible to implement the environmental sustainability in rural areas as well.

Acknowledgements

This paper is part of a paper presented at the First World Congress on Agritourism held in Bolzano from the 7th to 9th November, 2018.

Conflict of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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© 2020 Nicola Galluzzo, published by De Gruyter

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Journal and Issue

Articles in the same issue.

Experiences of community-based tourism in Romania: chances and challenges

Journal of Tourism Analysis: Revista de Análisis Turístico

ISSN : 2254-0644

Article publication date: 12 February 2020

Issue publication date: 9 December 2020

The purpose of this paper is to analyse community-based tourism (CBT) initiatives in the post-socialist rural Romania in terms of the holism of the tourist project and the implementation of the local participation. The paper focusses on chances and challenges of CBT.

Design/methodology/approach

Once the main objective was established, three research interests arose: How and why tourism played a significant role in the economic and social development of the rural local community? How has the local community participated in the starting and maintenance of the CBT projects and who played a key part? How can the level of success of the CBT implementations be qualitatively measured? Qualitative methodologies (interviews, on-site observations, informal discussions) were applied to survey the four case studies.

Natural and cultural features ensure a versatile potential for touristic exploitation of the Romanian rural area, but the villages are endangered by post-socialist economic and social transformations. Innovative approaches of CBT in rural areas ignited by charismatic leaders with entrepreneurial spirit develop based on the existent social, natural and cultural capital, but on the other hand, endeavours can be vulnerable because of hindering local municipalities or sustainability issues.

Practical implications

The findings facilitate recommendations in favour of effective CBT ventures.

Originality/value

Learning about the contribution of CBT to a sustainable development of rural regions with no/little tradition of private entrepreneurship can contribute to the revitalization of rural areas facing post-socialist challenges.

• Community-based tourism
• Participative development
• Rural Romania

Havadi Nagy, K.X. and Espinosa Segui, A. (2020), "Experiences of community-based tourism in Romania: chances and challenges", Journal of Tourism Analysis: Revista de Análisis Turístico , Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 143-163. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTA-08-2019-0033

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2020, Kinga Xénia Havadi Nagy and Ana Espinosa Segui.

Published in Journal of Tourism Analysis: Revista de Análisis Turístico . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Sustainability is an essential quality for the tourism sector. It ensures a long-term vision of tourist activities by not jeopardizing the tourist and human resources put in value in a particular territory.

the territory with its tourist potential and fragility;

the tourism industry itself and the social agents participating in these economic processes; and

both visitors and the host communities.

Host communities are vital agents who should hold the difficult post of being the guarantors of the economic processes taking place in their territories, tourism activities included. Without a doubt, local communities are directly interested in promoting economic operations in their places of residence, but not at any cost for them or the environment.

unspoiled nature and protection of resources;

subjective well-being of the residents;

economic prosperity;

healthy culture; and

optimum satisfaction of guest requirements.

The authors lowered the importance of economic prosperity expected from tourist activities by enhancing the respect to host communities, the respect to their socio-cultural authenticity and environment and the commitment with the general community well-being. The fifth element was focussed on visitors, who were also expected to reach a high level of satisfaction in their tourist experience.

Because there is a large number of tourist destinations that have witnessed the block and removal of local communities from the decision-making and management of the tourist activity, local agents are meant to be empowered for guaranteeing sustainable tourism in the territories they belong to and achieving a better quality of life ( Blackstock, 2005 ; Amir, 2015 ; Juma and Vidr, 2019 ).

hosting tourists in the local community;

managing a tourism scheme communally;

sharing the profits/benefits equitably;

using a portion of the profits/resources for community development and/or to maintain or protect a community cultural or natural heritage asset; and

involving communities in tourism planning, on-going decision-making and development and operations.

This means that host communities are supposed to participate to a greater extent in any part of the tourism development process ( Blackstock, 2005 ) to run successful tourist projects and to assure an equal redistribution of economic benefits, while also being responsible towards their cultural and natural heritage.

Thus, the more tourism follows a community-based approach, the higher should be the commitment of the tourism economic development to the sustainability of the projects and the positive impact in the community and environment with a long-term vision ( Tamir, 2015 ).

In this context, CBT is central for the sustainability of tourism ( Okazaki, 2008 ; Iorio and Corsale, 2014 ) and keeps its focus on the involvement of the host community in planning and maintaining tourist activities to create a more sustainable industry (Hall in Blackstock, 2005 ).

CBT is seen also as a local reaction against the excessive control that external businesspeople or investors can provoke in a place ( Wang and Wal, 2005 ) when using its touristic potential in a conventional way. Giampiccoli and Mtapuri (2017) point directly at the inequalities conventional tourism causes in developing countries and the financial leakage that hampers social and economic development related to this activity at the tourist destination.

By identifying a participative approach, its tools for managing local participation, the holism of the tourist development initiative and the way these projects have been implemented, it is possible to show the different rhythms, status and forms of tourism development in these areas and the impacts they have had in the community.

In this regard, the ladder of participation of Arnstein (1969) helps to understand the situation of tourist destination communities and the current state of local involvement in tourism development allocating participation in a range of eight rungs, grouped in three major phases of participation, namely, non-participation, tokenism and citizen power . The categories range from the illusion of participation through consultation, partnership to citizen control, the purest demonstration of real participation of a community. Selin and Chavez (1995) also included the evolution of participation from the settings of the project to the arrival of the first outcomes and beyond. Projects under a CBT approach should have a high degree of participation and thus should not be below citizen power , particularly in the decisive phases of the project: problem-setting, direction-setting, structuring and outcomes ( Selin and Chavez, 1995 ).

Community-based tourism in the local action

CBT can be considered a tourist typology regarding the kind of management carried out on a tourist destination. The community participation approach has been largely considered as “an integral part of sustainable tourism development” ( Okazaki, 2008 , p. 511; Tamir, 2015 ) because it contributes to cultural and environmental conservation ( Jalani, 2012 ; Garcia Lucchetti and Font, 2013 ) for considering tourism as an economic complement to traditional activities ( Giampiccoli and Mtapuri, 2017 ). Moreover, public involvement works as a driving force to protect the community’s natural environment and culture (Felstead in Okazaki, 2008 ; Amir, 2015 ) from abuses.

CBT addresses social needs, provides power ( Arnstein, 1969 ) as well as costs and benefits redistribution and sharing of decision-making ( Haywood, 1988 ) among a larger number of stakeholders, including more local agents, usually neglected in a non-CBT tourism management approach.

Johnson (2010 , p. 150) defined CBT as “a form of locally situated development that uses tourism to generate economic, social and cultural benefits within a community”, highlighting that this kind of management is better implemented when applied to rural, small-scale municipalities or even small regions ( Asker et al. , 2010 ).

In the opposite direction, Giampiccoli et al. (2015) and Giampiccoli and Mtapuri (2017) considered that CBT does not need to be implemented at a small geographical scale. In fact, these authors considered in their E’s CBT model, a list of key words related to CBT tourism which can be perfectly implantable to conventional tourism, being endogenous, environment, education, empowerment, equity, evolving, enduring, entrepreneurship, ethical, externalities, exclusive, experience, enjoyment and ethnic.

Another crucial element for Blackstock (2005) and Johnson’s (2010) CBT definition is the conceptualization of community, which cannot be generically applied for any CBT project. The traditional feature included in the more basic definitions is a group of people living in the same geographical area who might share similar goals for using their own territorial resources properly with tourism purposes. But reality shows that the concept of community is much more complex and difficult to define. Iorio and Corsale (2014) underlined the heterogeneity and stratification of local agents, who instead of willing to cooperate can become perfect competitors among them. At the same time, Sheller and Urry (2006) considered globalization, with its connections and contacts with external agents or the arrival of new alien agents, as a disruptor element of homogeneity in local communities.

In fact, Juma and Vidr (2019) highlighted the intrinsic heterogeneity of local communities to guarantee inclusivity in the CBT projects. By dividing the community in socio-cultural groups according to their gender, age, birthplace, level of education or participation in tourist activities or associations, the CBT projects can better assign distinct roles to the participants whose concerns and priorities enrich tourism management processes.

In this sense, it is more and more difficult to talk about isolated, genuine and pure communities ( Blackstock, 2005 ), which, at the same time, are not a requisite for understanding the CBT projects. Participation of the local community is necessary to develop the valuation of cultural and natural territorial resources correctly, but it can be interpreted in different ways. Johnson (2010) and Juma and Vidr (2019) included local residents and communities as the active participants in the process of tourism development, whereas Asker et al. (2010) also recognized the presence of external agents operating in local communities such as NGOs, trusts or associations managed for the community and by the community. Cioce et al. (2007) defined the CBT as sustainable development projects created by the community, whereas Garcia Lucchetti and Font (2013) and Amir (2015) gave an even more cultural approach, considering the CBT as a grassroots development in which tourists visit these communities and learn about the culture and the local environment.

Cooperation of the local community is essential to detect and develop the cultural assets used to create a sustainable tourist destination (Murphy in Okazaki, 2008 ).

Again, the concept of community embodies the inherent difficulties to pursue collective interest and the common good beyond individual needs and aspirations. In this sense, Getz and Jamal (1994) stressed that there are high transaction costs not only in terms of start-up, management and maintenance of a project but also in terms of time-consumption ( Okazaki, 2008 ) and real possibilities for delegating power in the community. That is why the CBT has also been perceived as a “naïve and unrealistic” territorial and social management ( Iorio and Corsale, 2014 , p. 234) or a “romantic” approach ( Taylor, 1995 ). Craig (2003) quoting Marjorie Mayo, focussed on community development, went one step further by assuring that community development can be an imposter driven by economic imperatives and a neoliberal agenda, rather than having values of empowerment and social justice on a local scale. The CBT does not take into account possible clashes, exclusion or fairness between members of the community ( Sproule, 1996 ). And, of course, it can empower local people burdened naturally with lack of education, business experience or leadership. That is why Tamir (2015) considered that the CBT must enhance confidence and skills of the local community, whereas Yoopetch (2015) mentioned the creation of social capital and the redistribution of power in the CBT projects.

Juma and Vidr (2019) stated that the CBT projects must consider an all-inclusive community participation at all levels of development, which can be difficult to implement. For this reason, there are many ways to delegate power in some agents who are more socially active, qualified and trained to solve problems and represent the community than the average. The apparition or detection of a “cosmopolitan leader” or “cosmopolitan local”, as Iorio and Wall (2012) defined it, can be decisive for leading to success of the tourist development process. This local person, belonging and tied to the community, has the potential to set in motion an economic project that works well for the community in a sustainable and long-lasting way. The potential and capacity of the cosmopolitan local make this person suitable to use the acquired knowledge and external influences she/he got in a wise way for the economic development of the community.

In conclusion, the CBT grows as a reaction from local communities or from organizations working on behalf of local communities. There are so many examples in the world for understanding what laissez faire means to conventional tourism operators in emerging destinations, that CBT management means firstly preservation and control of the tourist development process.

Methodological approach

The main objective of this research is to analyse how the CBT has been performed in four rural settlements in the historical region of Transylvania in terms of the holism of the tourism project and the implementation of the local participation. Based on this survey, we would like to understand better the chances and challenges the CBT projects face in a post-socialist country as Romania.

How and why tourism played a significant role in the economic and social development of the rural local community?

How has the local community participated in starting and maintenance of the CBT projects, and who played the key and decisive part?

How can the level of success of the CBT implementations be measured qualitatively?

The villages chosen for this study are Viscri (German: Deutsch-Weißkirch), Sâncraiu (Hungarian: Kalotaszentkirály), Rimetea (Hungarian: Torockó) and Roşia Montană (Hungarian: Verespatak) with existing and ongoing CBT implementations on different levels of development and implication ( Figure 1 ).

Fieldwork was carried out by both authors between 2013 and 2018, during several field trips and academic visits to the four localities. Because the aim of the study was to understand the implementation of the CBT projects in these settlements, it was crucial to use a qualitative method of analysis. Community building and CBT are very subjective social processes that imply a more in-depth understanding of the community with a personalized approach, especially in the cases where cosmopolitan leaders initiated the projects.

In this context, the qualitative approach included active observation, social interaction, informal discussions with community members both tourism service providers and non-active members in tourism and in-depth interviews with the representatives of the communities and the main actors in the CBT management. In-depth interviews were carried out with cosmopolitan leaders in Viscri and Sâncraiu, representatives of NGOs and action groups involved in the villages (ADEPT Foundation, Transylvania Trust, Trai cu Rost, Made in Roşia Montană) and representatives of local municipalities, with some of the stakeholders even repeatedly during the years. These interactions with the various actors enabled a multi-layered insight into the situation in each village and made a comparison possible so to give answers to the research questions.

Because we have been visiting these four municipalities during the past six years, we were able to assess the evolution of tourist activities and to observe chances and challenges of the endeavours.

partnerships;

community’ s capacity to deliver; and

funding and micro-credits.

Socio-political and economic context of the surveyed community-based tourism initiatives

In the second half of the twentieth century, the tourism industry in Romania was state-operated, and the development of touristic infrastructure was controlled by state agencies ( Rădulescu and Stănculescu, 2012 ; Pațac, 2008 ), and private community initiatives were not supported. Further on, the incoming tourism was monitored and channelled to certain selected destinations (Black seaside, designated mountain resorts and some spa and health resorts) ( Rădulescu and Stănculescu, 2012 ; Pațac, 2008 ). During that time, the analysed villages were not designated as touristic settlements, so no tourism investments were conducted. Rimetea had rudimentary informal touristic activity with accommodation services based on its natural potential, but faced a decline in the 1970s as it was forbidden by law to accommodate tourists in private houses.

The political changes of 1989 represent a clear seizure in the history of Romania, and thus several economic, social and political phenomenon show different courses before and after this year. The CBT experiences analysed in the study were conceived in a post-socialist, rather capitalist, economic context; a new economic settling which encouraged private property and entrepreneurship as an economic and social experiment. Yet, their location in peripheral rural areas makes them rather exceptional.

It is a fact that rural areas face numerous challenges: such as structural changes in agriculture, which cause loss of jobs; lower average income than in urban areas; narrower skill base because of thinning education and selective emigration of young better educated people; less developed service sector; and deficient health-care supply services ( Havadi-Nagy et al. , 2017 ), which all together cause a rather disadvantageous demographical structure with thin potential for initiative, innovation or entrepreneurship. In Romania, administrative, social, economic and advisory supportive structures are also underdeveloped and with low coverage. Local administrations have limited planning and financial capacity to access EU funds ( Jordan et al. , 2016 ). The main economic driving force is still the agriculture, and the diversification of economy and income possibilities is yet limited ( Havadi-Nagy et al. , 2017 ).

Tourism is lately seen by European and national development strategies as a strong and viable tool of economic and social progress in rural areas. Yet, even before these tendencies arose in political discourse, some of the villages perceived tourism as an alternative or complementary income source in the context of declining agricultural or industrial activities because of the powerful economic, social and demographic transformations induced by the political turn of 1989. These stakeholders were pioneers in igniting rural tourism endeavours already in the early 1990s in Romania and in alleviating the endangered rural communities and their natural and cultural heritage by focussing the interest of the tourists towards local traditions, customs, values, skills and knowledge of the rural areas, and thus contributing significantly to appreciation of the values and endorsement of communities to cherish and preserve them.

The four analysed rural communities share a relative geographic isolation, because of a rather remote location from the main roads, which fostered the preservation of local cultural and natural heritage for decades, but it has also perpetuated economic marginality and infrastructural peripheralisation contributing to rural exodus.

Each village has an important mixture of cultural and natural resources that make them very appealing for tourism development. The location at the fringe of the Apuseni Mountains of Sâncraiu and Rimetea guarantee a rich natural potential, combined with intangible cultural resources of the Hungarian ethnic group and the built heritage. Viscri enjoys a rich Saxon cultural and built heritage, whereas Roşia Montană has a unique mining history that dates back to Roman times.

Viscri (Braşov county), one of five villages of Bunești commune, is a small village with about 403 (2011) inhabitants and lays in a remote hilly area in Southern Transylvania. This region is well known as the stronghold of the Transylvanian Saxons community, which has shaped the area during the past 800 years. With the fall of Communism, a large majority of this German ethnic community left the villages and towns of Transylvania, leaving behind a specific cultural landscape and an important built cultural heritage as a remaining trace of the centuries of their presence. On the strength of this heritage developed a preservation initiative combined with soft touristic activities.

Sâncraiu (Cluj county) is a well-known settlement of another geographically, historically and ethnographically defined particular Transylvanian region, known by the Hungarian population as Kalotaszeg (Romanian: Călata). The region between Huedin (Hungarian: Bánffyhunyad) and Cluj-Napoca (Hungarian: Kolozsvár), with approximately 42 villages, is traditionally inhabited mainly by Hungarian ethnics, where Hungarian culture still persists. The commune lies 6 km from Huedin, at the fringe of the Apuseni Mountains, in a nice hilly scenery ( Havadi Nagy and Sebestyén, 2016 ). The living traditions and crafts ignited mainly a cultural tourism endeavour of the community.

Rimetea (Alba county) is a commune with two villages, namely, Rimetea and Colţesti (Hungarian: Torockószentgyörgy) with an ethnic Hungarian majority in the Apuseni Mountains. Once a town (seventeenth century) and a mining centre, it is a quiet village with an impressive village scape, in a beautiful natural scenery, at the foot of the Piatra Secuiului Mountain. The exemplary activity for protecting vernacular architecture and preserving the built cultural heritage has transformed Rimetea into one of the most appealing and famous villages of Transylvania ( Ilovan et al. , 2016 ).

Roşia Montană (Alba county) is a village in the Golden Quadrangle, the ancient Romanian gold and silver deposits, in the Metaliferi Mountains, a division of the Apuseni Mountains. The town has a two millennial mining history, and it turned internationally famous in the past decades because of a gold and silver mining project, which, if approved, would become Europe’s largest open-pit gold mine, and it would use the gold cyanidation mining technique. As a result of the significant resistance that it met, the project is currently (January 2020) on hold, yet the long-lasting struggle left its mark on the settlement and its inhabitants. Several initiatives try to activate alternative development measures for the town and its remaining citizens, some showing the CBT features.

Results and discussions

The results of this research are presented in three subsections which, at the same time, are answering the main research questions set out at the beginning of the study.

Role of tourism in the economic and social development of the rural local community

The yearly (since 1991) organized traditional dance and music festival ( Figure 2 ) had a major impact on the development of Sâncraiu as a tourist destination , which contributed largely to the visibility and appreciation of the village. This event showed the need for creating a net of accommodation facilities for tourists interested in the intangible cultural heritage of the Călata region. At the first event in 1991, the festival attendees were accommodated in 15 houses of the villagers, using the empty, available rooms they had. As the manager of the local travel agency in Sâncraiu said in the interview:

[…] we never thought that we would have pensions and guests! Never! […] The rest of the year there were no tourists coming to the village. I thought it was not enough. If we wanted to make money to live from this activity, it was not enough.

Because the interviewee, a former teacher, was unemployed at that time, he saw the potential of the collaboration between those interested in tourism in the village and he became the “cosmopolitan leader” of the village for the tourism promotion:

I said to these 15 pensions if it was ok for them, if I would go to different national or international organisations and fairs to promote not only me or my pension, but the whole community, all the pensions.

It was this “change agent” who fostered the settlement and development of the tourist offer in the village. So, even though at the beginning there was a support from the organizers of the dance festival, this entreprise in tourism activities originated mainly from locals.

The tourism activity, based primarily on cultural heritage (built heritage, customs, traditional music, dances and crafts), turned into a significant initiative to diversify the locals’ income possibilities. Apart from the accommodation offer and the natural resources, Sâncraiu provides a rich variety of eco-tourist workshops related to local cultural heritage, such as traditional trades, wood carving or embroidering, run by villagers in collaboration with the local leader.

The Sâncraiu tourist development has been thought as a sectorial activity, not irradiating to the rest of the community. It is true that tourism has provoked a contagious beautification of the village and has helped to promote a circular economy in the village, but tourism has grown in parallel to the rest of economic activities, not invading or inviting greater connection or interactions. However, besides the share of the local population directly engaged in touristic activities (mainly accommodation and catering), other benefit indirectly, to a larger or smaller extent, from them (transport company, grocery, gift shop, souvenir production and selling of local products).

Nowadays, Sâncraiu has 40 pensions organized in an association and working together in a local travel agency. Unlike the leader, the rest of tourism operators work mainly on agriculture, and tourism is still a complementary, more or less important, income source for them, and “generally women are in charge of tourism and pensions and men are working on workshops not related to the tourism sector”. Because of cultural tourism being a complementary source of income, inhabitants are also more motivated to protect and preserve cultural heritage to maintain customs and various identity defining values of the commune.

The feeling of belonging and community was a general phenomenon in rural communities, especially in those with a major part of ethnic minorities. After the exodus of the German ethnic group in the early 1990s, the mixture of the population in the villages changed, and with it the identity and the feeling of community as well. Also in Viscri ( Figure 3 ), with the vast majority of the traditional village community gone, almost nobody remained who cared about and knew how to maintain the village. This meant that cultural heritage was in danger. As in the preceding example, Viscri also counted on a “cosmopolitan leader” in the community, a lady of Saxon offspring, one of the few who stayed, whose goal was much broader than the tourist development of the village. As she said in the interview:

I was interested in helping my community. I wanted to help people to have a better life in my village […] When the Saxons all left for Germany, we decided not to leave. For two reasons: to try to preserve what our ancestors did in the past and I thought that we had the opportunity to live in a democracy and do something for the community.

Further on, the structural changes in the economy caused high unemployment for the remaining population. In her endeavour to do something for her community, the Saxon lady got into local politics, became the first representative of Viscri in the municipality council and undertook several projects to mobilize the community.

Already some years before tourism turned into a major topic in the village, she started to create activities which tied the community together. Repairing the school building was the first community project and numerous others followed:

I became a teacher because the previous teacher went to Germany and the village needed a new teacher. Parents were not sending children to the school. So, I had to find how to talk to them and I organised events. Now I see that was creating the community by intuition.

The authentic village scape, with the fortified church (listed as UNESCO cultural heritage site since 1993), and the structure of the village with typical Saxon households preserve important features of the Saxon traditions ( Ilovan et al. , 2016 ), boosted the arrival of tourists, and the local leader got in touch with the majority of them, “almost every visitor who came, by that time very few, passed by my kitchen to talk and try to find partners for my dream”. Spontaneously, she offered accommodation for some of these tourists until one French tourist asked her if she wanted to start tourism.

So, I said Let’s ask the community […] In one of the village meetings I asked if someone wanted to start with tourism and five families, including mine, said yes. So, we started.

In Viscri, tourism was never seen as a substitute to traditional rural activities. In fact, it rose as an outcome of the renewal of the built Saxon cultural heritage, which was also seen as an opportunity for employing the underprivileged population of Viscri, particularly of Roma ethnicity, tying them to the Saxon built cultural heritage and the rest of the community, enlarging their chances of employment, to be proud and self-confident and improve their quality of life.

The restoration of the traditional homesteads and other buildings had a really positive impact in the village. This happened with the support and expertise of NGOs, such as the Mihai Eminescu Trust (MET)[ 2 ], which focusses on the built cultural heritage, which offers training, the learning of crafts in house restorations, brick manufacturing or even guesthouse management for the affected population.

With the gathered experience, inside knowledge and the support of the experts, the local leader created a whole village project:

With this intuitive approach, we started the village project with its three dimensions. The first one was to give people the opportunity to learn a traditional trade by using local methods materials and methods, which inevitably cut prices on the building sector.

Since underprivileged people got a better income and a status in the community, we also got the social approach of the project. Lastly, the cultural aspect of the whole village project was based on my wish that Roma would take responsibility for the Saxon built heritage. Since they haven’t built them, they did not have any attachment, respect or responsibility […] We started to help them repair their facades because they were very proud that they (Roma) could do something. The entire village was proud that the village started to look nicer”.

The mainly unspoiled, for Western standards archaic, traditional village scape, the remote quiet location, its Saxon character and the built cultural heritage with the UNESCO listed fortified church and main street with its households confer the settlement a certain tourist potential ( Jordan et al. , 2016 ). In the village project, tourism was seen as a key activity for the economic and social development of the village, especially for those with no education or any professional training, but always under control of the community. In fact, according to statistics provided by MET in 2018, tourism is the third activity in terms of employability of Viscri, after agriculture (both self-employment and day labourers) and crafts, fourth if considering pensioners, and it is still a complementary source of income for the majority of the people working on it. The main income source in the village is subsidized agriculture. Subsistence agriculture and the small-scale production of traditional products (jam, cheese, honey, etc.) for direct sale are also important for villagers.

Also at in middle of 1990s, it is possible to set the beginning of tourism and heritage protection activities in Rimetea, with a decisive implication of an organization, which took over the role of the “cosmopolitan leader”. The first steps towards a broader built cultural heritage protection were taken in 1993-1994 when students and young researchers identified Rimetea and its entire ensemble of vernacular architecture as worthy of being restored and preserved. As the village gained international attention, a founder and former vice-president of ICOMOS established a grant program to sponsor the rehabilitation of the traditional houses. The supervising entity of the grant program is the Transylvania Trust (TT), a registered charity which focusses on the conservation and promotion of Transylvania’s built heritage and prompts society to be receptive towards and value the built environment ( Ilovan et al. , 2016 ). As interview partners concluded, the Trust marked its presence in the village at an opportune moment:

[…] they came in the right moment back then, before 1999 […] and persuaded, but no much effort was needed, the people of Torockó, to preserve it like it is, this beautiful row of white houses.

[…] and by that supporting the endeavours of the villagers to develop tourism based on their cultural values, encouraging to consider vernacular architecture as precious and worthy to be cherished and protected, as a possible income source.

The conservation work ( Figure 4 ) in Rimetea conducted by the community with the support of TT received international recognition, which further stimulated the conservation works, the international fame and tourism based on uniqueness and authenticity ( Ilovan et al. , 2016 ).

As earlier research shows, tourism is confined to the spring–summer season, with few exceptions, and generates for the most operators moderate revenues because of just a few opportunities to spend money for accommodation, catering and souvenirs. This means that for the major part of the population tourism is for a greater or lesser extent an important secondary income ( Jordan et al. , 2016 ). There are also entrepreneurs who run touristic family businesses. According to one of the tourist entrepreneurs, “there are a lot of [business] possibilities to explore”, but he imputes lack of entrepreneurship of the locals or the missing guidance as a major impediment. For the time being, it seems as if the combination of tourism, agriculture and commuting to nearby cities is a viable economic model in Rimetea.

Roşia Montană is the only surveyed village at an incipient state of tourism development. The mining settlement is suffering from the major social and economic shifts caused by the long period of uncertainty, the social conflict between different actor groups and from the relocation efforts conducted by the mining company. The number of inhabitants declined heavily, many houses are abandoned and deserted, and there are scarce opportunities (like commuting to nearby towns, agriculture) to secure livelihoods, and basic services (like healthcare) are missing.

In this context, certain locals and external activists, with a strong link to the settlement because of the long-lasting protest movement, try to infuse life in the remained community and tackle major topics such as income possibilities, entrepreneurship, youth and village scape. The Boy Scouts initiative attempts to educate the kids in an entrepreneurial and environmentalist spirit. A social entreprise gathers some 40 knitting ladies and supports them in manufacturing and selling qualitative handcrafted products. Architects, with the support of volunteers, also started a project to rehabilitate some of the houses.

Trai cu Rost (meaningful life) is an action group attempting to facilitate touristic activities and diversify income sources. The initiators, activists and locals consider that “there is no tourism without community”, so they have an integrative way of approaching tourism. Their aim is to activate and foster touristic offers based on the local natural and cultural potential, and to create an information platform connecting and presenting the different initiatives, services and activities that the community can facilitate and keep up. They want to create opportunities for the locals by promoting their skills and aptitudes to raise awareness of alternative income possibilities and to improve livelihood. First achievement is an internet presentation site, but also marked hiking and biking trails, as well as further activities, where the visitors can learn about the culture, people and economy of the region ( Figure 5 ).

a general lack of entrepreneurship, typical for marginal areas;

significant shortage of resources (social, financial, human);

no support from the local and regional administration; and

insecurity and reluctance of the people.

Participation of the local community in the starting and maintenance of the community-based tourism projects

The local community is a very complex definition of agents, interests and agreements in a small geographical area. Although CBT empowers and involves the community in the decision-making of the tourism model, it does not mean that all the members of the community participate constantly in an equal and active way and monitor any phase of the whole process. In fact, the presence of the “cosmopolitan leader” is a trigger force that lightens and hurries all the processes because the person binds together the community because of his/her reputation and savoir-faire in the community.

In the case of Sâncraiu, even though a process of delegation of power occurred on behalf of the “cosmopolitan leader”, it is remarkable that the organization of the providers of touristic services in a well-functioning association, with yearly meetings (where they set the fees and prices, schedule the commune events, etc.), with the use of a system for the fair distribution of the tourists, good online presence and significant cooperation with several foreign and domestic travel agencies ( Havadi Nagy and Sebestyén, 2016 ). This initiative has a committed strong personality (the president of the association) as the driving force, and the tourism operators delegate their participation to a steering committee. The president of the association is an internal agent, well-known by the community, who leads the idea of promoting tourism in the whole village. He had a tourism-based approach because the main goal of the CBT project was to establish and maintain an offer of local accommodation facilities joined into a local travel agency, managed by the steering committee.

The project included the put in value of the cultural heritage through ecotourism activities in collaboration with many members of the community. The cooperation with the public administration is also important, at least for the provision of the infrastructure of all kinds (transportation, water supply and canalization, health care and education) and also in maintaining a neat and pleasant village scape. Yet, even the major of the commune participates actively in tourism by running a pension.

As Felstead (quoted in Okazaki, 2008 ) considered, CBT must also include the processes that lead people to perceive themselves as able and entitled to make decisions. Viscri is a very good example of this process. The system of monthly meeting for consultation, debate and decision-making developed during the past decades and evolved from a gathering of shy villagers into a well-elaborated managerial instrument for implementing citizen power, where various interest groups are represented and given a voice. These regular consultations provided the frame for setting priorities and realizing projects such as house restorations, an ecological sewage plant, waste management and leisure activities for tourists. These measures aim to solve the social, cultural and economic problems of the local community. Consultations and decision-making regarding tourism were also conducted in these meetings. Further on, this tool also works as a conversational instrument with the local government.

The presence of NGOs such as ADEPT Foundation[ 3 ] and MET as partners with local and external members and experts, their expertise and their contribution to the measures conducted in the village, working directly with the local leader also permitted a wider holism of the project.

In Viscri, the goal of the endeavour was based on the common good from the very beginning. The social approach of this village obliged to formulate the tourism development process in a very different way, because tourism was meant to be an integration tool for the most deprived dwellers and a complementary source of income for the majority, which would reduce income disparities among inhabitants. Thus, this approach encouraged the endorsement and promotion of further leaders in the village, who were empowered to represent different groups of interest according to the existing trades, activities, neighbourhoods, women or age groups at meetings.

Viscri community is regulated by a social contract (called locally as the document of values) established in the monthly meetings:

[…] we made a village board to administrate our values and the problems that tourism could cause to our authentic lifestyle. We try to find solutions. Since every group of interest is represented, each month there are two partners who prepare the meeting and moderate the session.

This constant monitoring and control of the tourism activity have resulted in a conscious limitation of tourism in a high season for six months and a controlled lack of activity for the rest of the year. When asked about the way tourism is managed in Viscri, the “cosmopolitan leader” said:

If tourists park the car in front of the well, animals can’t drink anymore in the afternoon when they come back from the fields. This is why we dictate what we want. In six months, we don’t get tourists, we work with the community. Six months we earn money and six months are for us. We don’t want to have tourists at any cost. We can do it because we have so many tourists […] in other villages are still trying to make it work.

The case of Rimetea is similar to the one in Viscri in the context that both villages ignited tourism activities based on their valuable built cultural heritage and its protection. Despite the fame and success of the village, tourism is not especially well organized, mainly because of lack of leadership and weak cooperation between tourism entrepreneurs and the communal administration. On the one hand, the local authorities are not regarded as leaders, and on the other hand, there is no local leader – as in Viscri or Sâncraiu – whom everybody accepted. Groups form around several strong personalities (mostly entrepreneurs in tourism), and these groups are rather competing with each other instead of working together for a common interest ( Ilovan et al. , 2016 ). The consulting Transylvania Trust[ 4 ] is partner and expert for cultural heritage protection, but not on tourism business and development.

The tourism in Rimetea is community-based and run by community members, several local SMEs with tourism profile and services established in the village. For many families, tourism is a viable primary or secondary income source, it contributes to the protection of natural and cultural heritage, but we cannot identify this feature of striving for the general well-being of the community, as it is present in Viscri or in Sâncraiu. This is also reflected in the testament of one of the successful tourism entrepreneurs, who considers tourism “a market, which has to be taken cared of”.

Different is the situation in Roşia Montană, where local and external initiators encourage tourism activities as an alternative and complementary income source, as a tool to use the local and regional natural and cultural potential for the welfare of the entire community, but face scepsis of a great share of the population and total rejection of the administration.

Measuring the success of the community-based tourism projects in the four surveyed villages

Participation of the community in the setting and development of the CBT project is difficult to measure from a quantitative point of view, because goodwill, commitment, participation or solidarity among other values are intangible and unmeasurable. Moreover, the degree of participation and commitment among agents can vary along all the phases of the CBT project.

According to our findings about the achievements of the surveyed communities in tourism development, we allocated the four analysed villages into the ladder of participation by Arnstein (1969) . We consider that the CBT implementations in Viscri, Sâncraiu and Rimetea have achieved a high share of community involvement and participation, and thus occupying a high position on the ladder of participation. We position these projects of CBT on a transition level between delegated power and citizen control, whereat Viscri definitely has the strongest participation, also because of the fact that participation and community involvement is significant in the overall community management ( Figure 6 ).

Further considerations show the limits of full control, as a result of several reasons, but the most important being the lack of political will and regulatory structures that would support, foster and facilitate this kind of endeavours at the regional and national level. So, even though in these examples the community is empowered and it mostly overcame social and psychological barriers of participation, the ultimate level of participation is yet blocked. This is strongly felt even at the local municipality level in Roșia Montană, where the political support for the CBT is non-existent. Here, the initiators face further impediments as well, such as disbelief and reluctance from a share of the population. Yet the situation in Roșia Montană is more complicated because of the recent history of conflicts. We should not forget that this initiative, comparing with the other surveyed villages, is at an incipient stage. This context makes it hard to correctly determine the level of participation in the CBT implementations.

All the surveyed villages have various and valuable available “tourism assets”, both natural and cultural.

Because of different reasons and circumstances (level of empowerment of the community, interest, capacities and resources), we can find different levels of “willingness to engage in tourism”.

All the surveyed initiatives laid major emphasis on identifying community skills and on applying measures to develop missing “requirements” as awareness raising or entrepreneurial know-how for a successful CBT.

External fund-dependency is relative, as private investments, reinvestment of income out of tourism activities and self-acquired “financial inputs” (such as grants) exceed the importance of financial support from NGOs or other donor agencies, and the projects strive self-sufficiency.

The aspect of the partnership is also well covered, even though it manifests in different ways and strengths with various stakeholders. In Sâncraiu, Rimetea and Viscri, there are strong relations with travel agencies. Sâncraiu and Viscri have a rather well functioning relationship and cooperation with an active local municipality, which is weaker in Rimetea, and it lacks totally in Roșia Montană. NGOs are present in all the case studies, but in some cases, they are only indirectly significant for the tourism activities, such as TT in Rimetea or Adoptă o casă in Roșia Montană focussing mainly on built cultural preservation work.

Planning, monitoring and evaluating are the strongest in Viscri, followed by Sâncraiu, where the actors have established an organically grown planning with the involvement of a large share of the affected community. Whereas it is important to mention that in case of Viscri, this goes way beyond tourism and applies to a whole range of social and economic issues of the village. In Rimetea, we did not notice planning on community level, but rather on the individual enterprise level.

According to these findings, we can conclude that Viscri and Sâncraiu are the most successful, whereat, the initiative with CBT features in Roșia Montană is a new development, lacking the longevity of the other surveyed CBT implementations ( Table I ).

Conclusions and further research

As to be seen in the analysis, tourism plays a significant role in the economic and social development of the surveyed rural settlements, but it is a part of a complex structure with manifold stakeholders and interests.

As expected, the level and intensity of participation of different community members in the starting and maintenance of the CBT projects varies over time. Similar is the situation with the individual economic revenues, as well with the social, cultural or environmental benefits of the ventures for the communities, whereas an increase of the gains for the interest of the community as a whole is evident.

Decisive for the success of CBT endeavours are, on the one hand, empowered communities, but also a legal and normative framework for the implementations of CBT enterprises. Further on, local co-operation, trust and networking and partnerships with external stakeholders (NGOs, experts) are elementary as well. This kind of approaches also needs vision and leadership, entrepreneurial skills and mobilization of resources.

Obviously the presence of a “cosmopolitan leader” in the setting and perpetuation of the CBT endeavour is decisive, as they are capable to lead the community and its tourist or non-tourist projects towards the economy for the common good. However, this kind of individual leadership can show many risks associated to the subjectivity of the vision of the leader, charisma and personal appeal and the difficulties for replacement and delegation once the leader wants/needs to reduce his/her personal exposure to the project. Thus, this major advantage of having a strongly engaged leader could turn into a weakness of the management model, and under a new, less charismatic management, the projects could fail.

In the four cases analysed, tourism is still a rather non-invasive activity because of the growing, but controlled market demand, and no major unsolvable dilemmas have arisen from the possible arrival of external stakeholders who are capable to alter the rhythm and the schedule of the community. Yet, some peak season phenomena such as crowding or irregularly parked cars which hinder traffic and damage the aesthetic experience occur in these villages as well.

A further challenge of the CBT projects are the local and regional administrations, which in many cases are rather reluctant towards innovative approaches, where citizens take over power, or they have no instruments or the will to support these endeavours. The CBT projects need to work in parallel with the public administration, not overlapping and exceeding its control in the territory. A vision of long-term progress direction and coordination is needed, so that different measures or development strategies do not counteract or hinder each other.

Decisive in the case studies was also the early realization of the valuable cultural heritage to be used in economic purposes, before major interventions in the buildings and environment would have spoiled the appealing village scape, as it is the case of many settlements and by that ruining a significant structure and foundation for unfolding rural tourism. Cultural tourism also supports the preservation and maintenance of traditions and practices of intangible heritage, endangered by rural exodus as well.

In conclusion, these villages could be beacons for their regions and role models for other CBT ventures in the area and beyond, based on their community-building and management, as well as the respectful use of natural and cultural heritage resources. Their experiences could be incorporated into good practice recommendations and even into rural tourism development policies in post-socialist context.

The location of the investigated settlements

Musicians in Sâncraiu; by courtesy of Michael Schneeberger

Viscri streetscape; by courtesy of Michael Schneeberger

Rimetea, rehabilitating traditional houses; by courtesy of Michael Schneeberger

Roşia Montană, guiding visitors; by courtesy of Michael Schneeberger

The analysed CBT initiatives on the ladder of participation

Level of success of the surveyed CBT initiatives

Source: Own representation based on Garcia Lucchetti and Font (2013)

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank to the interview and discussion partners for their time, courtasy and valuable input.

Corresponding author

About the authors.

Kinga Xénia Havadi Nagy is based at Geography Department in the University Babeș-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Ana Espinosa Segui is based at Geography Department in the University of Alicante, Alicante, Spain.

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