AN ANALYSIS OF THE REGIONALIZED TOURISM SATELLITE ACCOUNT DATA IN ROMANIA FOR THE PERIOD 2011-2017

In Romania, Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) at national level is produced annually starting with the reference year 2011 by the National Institute of Statistics. However, there are no TSA data at regional level (for regions); worldwide there are few countries having such data (in the period 2018-2019 only fourteen countries were identified). The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of main results pertaining to regionalizing the TSA aggregates in Romania at the level of its eight development region. These have shown for the first time the economic size of tourism in each region in Romania. Hence the highest contribution to regional GDP in 2017 is found for South-East region (4.1%) over the national average (2.8%). At the opposite end, there is South-West Oltenia region with the lowest contribution to the regional GDP (1.6%). For the period 2011-2017 there are remarkable developments for Centre region that has increased its share to the national tourism direct GDP (from 10.9% to 15.3%); this is in contrast with Bucharest-Ilfov region that registered a decline of the same share, from 36.2% in 2011 to 28.9% in 2017. Still, Bucharest-Ilfov region accounts for over one third of internal tourism consumption in Romania.