URBAN CULTURAL TOURISM IN EUROPEAN ECONOMIC CONTEXT. THE ROLE OF MUSEUMS, THEATERS, PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND CINEMA ATTENDANCE

Tourism has played a significant economic part both in Europe and worldwide, which is statistically demonstrated by the growing share of this sector in the European economy in the last decades. An important contribution has been made by urban cultural tourism, that niche of tourist activity on which we focused our analysis. This paper aims to study the relationship between economic growth and cultural tourism from the perspective of museums, theatres, cinemas and public libraries to demonstrate the importance of cultural tourism for the urban economy. Based on data describing this form of tourism between 2000 and 2019, we aimed, as the main objective of the study, to analyze the contribution of urban cultural tourism to both the growth of the European tourism sector and European economic growth in general. The lack of statistical data led us to exclude a number of European states and to arrange the remaining ones so as to configure two models processed using multiple linear regression (MLR). Our conclusion is that urban cultural tourism positively influences both the growth of the tourism sector and the economic growth. Of the variables analyzed, it seems that the two factors with the highest degree of attractiveness, in the case of urban cultural tourism, are museums first and then theaters. The results we have obtained are important in the decision to establish the urban development strategy. The inclusion of tourism in the urban development strategy allows not only to increase the attractiveness but also to attract revenues to local budgets, stimulates entrepreneurial activity in hotels, restaurants, shops and it has a positive impact on the labor market. Thus, the development of urban tourism has direct, indirect and induced economic and social effects that cannot be neglected. The public and entrepreneurial sectors have significantly to gain once the strategy of urban development through tourism is valued