Transport Accessibility as Factor for the Development of Tourist Accommodation. The Case of Health Resorts in Romania

George GAMAN1
1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Faculty of Geography, Centre for Research on Settlements and Urbanism, Cluj-Napoca, ROMANIA
E-mail: gaman.george07@yahoo.com
Pages: 127-138

Abstract. The Romanian health tourism has had all the necessary premises for development and for registering some of the most efficient revenues. We therefore used a complex methodology aiming to highlight the current transport accessibility level in the case of each of the Romanian health resorts. We scored each type of accessibility (land and aerial transport) while considering the geographical position of the resorts and the connections with any European, National roads, primary and secondary railways, airports, and also the way in which the accessibility level of a resort influences the development of accommodation. Our second goal was to reveal the influence of transport accessibility level on tourist accommodation facilities in the Romanian health resorts, by performing several correlations between accessibility and accommodation facilities of each health resort. The conclusions showed that the health resorts situated in Carpathian area present the lowest level of transport accessibility and subsequently the influence on tourist accommodation facilities is very low, except for the health resorts situated at the seaside along the Black Sea coast, along Prahova Valley and in Crișana region, which were developed in locations where health factors were discovered, and under different historical circumstances and in which case the specific nature of health tourism requires a more secluded placement.

K e y w o r d s:  transport infrastructure, accessibility, health tourism, therapeutic values