THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE INTEGRATED TOURISM DEVELOPMENT OF A REGION AND THE RESPECTIVE LOCAL COMMUNITIES OF ROMANIA. A MORAL APPROACH

The current social and economic stage of development observed in Romania and, implicitly, that of the national tourism, requires a new type of approach vis-à-vis the “tourism development” concept. Until the 90s, tourism development was carried out in a centralized fashion and, in most cases, with little regard to the impact that strategy had on the environment and the local population. This strategy- which, in some cases, is still applied today-has had a significant impact on a national level, by creating huge discrepancies among the country’ s regions, with direct repercussions on local communities and the national labor market. Recent years have shown a distinct linkage between tourism and local communities, largely owed to the multiplying effect that tourism activities have, but also to the intricate network of correspondences between themselves. The purpose of this academic endeavor is to analyze the existing relationship between tourism development and the local community where it occurs, between the need for development and the need to preserve the local traditions, and to obser- ve if such equilibrium is feasible between these two terms. The ethics of tourist development should be the niche where the development policy should meet the expectations of the host local community.