Rural tourism in the Danube Delta : between the empirical and theoretical approach

Within the COASTAL project (Collaborative Land-Sea Integration Platform), funded by GA 773782, through Horizon 2020, six different coastal regions in Europe are analyzed, in order to study the synergy between rural and maritime economic activities, in order to generate policies and solutions for the business environment, respecting the environment, improving the living standards of the inhabitants, increasing the area from an economic point of view. Regarding Romania, the area of interest on which the case study is carried out is the Danube Delta. After analyzing the literature, meetings with stakeholders working in both coastal and rural areas, we tried to model through specific software programs of economic activities in the Danube Delta: agriculture, fishing and rural tourism. In this paper we will present the main results obtained from the empirical and theoretical perspective through which we looked at the activity of rural tourism in the area of interest.