CACTUS CACTUS J Tour Bus Manag Econ CACTUS – Journal of Tourism Business, Management and Economics 2247-3297 ASE Publishing House Bucharest, Romania cactus-2017-14 Research Article L81, O11, R10 Analysis of Tourism Development Disparities in Romania Popescu Delia https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7386-2985 deliapopescu2@yahoo.com Nica Ana-Maria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5830-9428 Bulin Daniel https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6649-0784 Bucharest University of Economic StudiesBucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic StudiesBucharest, Romania Bucharest University of Economic StudiesBucharest, Romania 15 12 2017 16 2 15122017 Copyright © 2017, The Author(s) 2017 The Author(s) This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

In 1998 eight development regions were set up in Romania (North-West, North-East, South-West, South-East, South, West, Center, Bucharest and Ilfov), with a view to efficiently absorb the EU funds, in order to reduce the socio-economic development disparities. Tourism is an important sector of the world economy and also of the development regions, contributing to economic growth in less developed areas, which yet have a high tourism potential. The main aim of the present paper is the analysis of development disparities of tourism in Romania, by tracking the changes that have taken place since the moment of creation of the development regions, in the periods of pre-accession and post-accession of Romania to the EU. The research comprises a cluster analysis based on tourism supply and demand indicators in the regions and counties of Romania; the main hypothesis of the study is that the development differences of Romanian tourism have diminished after the accession, as within the regions there are counties with greater tourism activity, that may turn into engines of regional economic growth.

 Keywords Regional development tourism indicators cluster analysis disparities Romania’s development regions

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