RURAL TOURISM IN ROMANIA - EVOLUTIONS AND DISCONTINUITIES

This paper analyzes the evolution of rural tourism since the early '70s, the time of onset, and indicates the discontinuity recorded especially after 1989 until the brink of the preparation for Romania's joining the European Union and the present state, one far behind the countries with extremely high degree of urbanization and industrialization, probably as a result of a lack of strategy for this form of tourism in which the beneficiary is the Ministry of Tourism, as the health tourism and ecotourism have recently had. The location of many villages in areas of outstanding natural landscapes, the richness and variety of cultural heritage that endows them, are issues related to an increased tourism potential that can be capitalized and those unique tourism products that can not be seen, admired and offered by other countries.