Vol. III, no. 1/2012

New Team and New Challenges for the Department of Tourism and Geography

By Delia Popescu

Poising Frontline Service Providers for Success: An Integrative Review and Future Directions

By Vincent Magnini

It has long been understood that frontline employees are a critical marketing tool in hospitality and tourism businesses. In fact, empirical research indicates that consumers often perceive the frontline employees with whom they interact as the company itself (Mohr and Henson, 1996). Due to the pivotal roles of these frontline employees, a growing corpus of research examines how to be select, train, motivate, and manage these individuals. This article synthesizes research from diverse disciplines to provide an up-to-date synopsis of these areas.

The Economic Contribution of Tourism at Local Level: An Application for Predeal Resort in Roman

By Cristi Frenţ

In many cases, the measurement of the economic effects of tourism is carried out at national but also at regional level using different methods such us Tourism Satellite Accounts, Input –Output analysis, Computable General Equilibrium model, multipliers. However at local level (resort, town, city, and village) mainly due to some methodological difficulties, the application of these methods is severely limited. Under these circumstances the contribution of tourism to local economies may be outlined by the analysis of the existing statistical data at local level. This paper aims such an analysis (based on the existing statistical data) customized for one of the most famous tourist resorts in Romania, Predeal located in Brasov county. Choosing this resort is not accidental: unlike other resorts located on Prahova Valley, Predeal did not benefit from a strong industry in the communist period and not even before, so its economic profile from the historical point of view is almost exclusively based on services, in particular tourism services. A series of statistical indicators that characterize both the Predeal local economy at the sectoral level (number of firms, turnover, average number of employees, labor productivity) and tourism as a distinct activity through specific indicators (the capacity accommodation and food and beverage units, occupancy, number of arrivals, overnight stays, length of stay) will be analyzed. The results obtained show that tourism as an economic activity has a major contribution to the local economy of Predeal.

The Inventory of the Objectives Bucharest Fortification Belt for Tourism Arranging Purposes

By Doru Tudorache, Victor Timotin, Alina Cârlogea, Roxana Aştefănoaiei

Built over 100 years ago, at the initiative of King Carol I, the belt of fortifications of the Romanian capital, a remarkable achievement of the national military architecture, has currently reached an advanced state of decay. The analysis of successful European models (Hollandse Nieuwe Waterlinie forts of Utrecht - Holland, Vesting Antwerpen line - Belgium or fortified line of Essex - United Kingdom) demonstrates that such objectives can be successfully converted into museums, cultural centres, urban parks, recreation centres or even accommodation units, with a great potential in this regard. Their tourist arrangement is required both to stop degradation of valuable cultural-historical objectives (recently classified as historical monuments) and to diversify the out of town cultural recreational opportunities, in order to strengthen one of the most important and fastest growing national tourist destination. This material proposes an inventory of the fortified objectives around Bucharest, to identify those that are best suited to be arranged for tourism.

Opportunities and Challenges in the Assurance and Improvement of Service Quality in Higher Education

By Anamaria Răvar

The twenty-first century, human resources stand at the basis of the society’s economic and social development. After all, man is in control of all the other production factors, finding new means of exploiting the primary resources and continuously improving the technical capital. Indeed, man leads development. With one condition: to have the knowledge, abilities and experience to use the rest of the resources as efficient and effective as possible. Thus, man also needs to learn, to improve, to experiment. And what place would be more adequate to do all these and many more than universities, as institutions of science and knowledge? In a society in which individual personal and professional performance is seen as being determined by the provision of high quality education services, quality assurance and improvement initiatives are not only necessary, but rather mandatory for maintaining the competitiveness of public and private universities alike. The current paper aims to present and analyze the main opportunities and challenges of service quality assurance in the Romanian higher education, providing a specific focus on the tourism higher education – a domain which has undergone significant change during the last decades and which currently strives to comply with the standards and requirements set by both foreign institutions of tourism higher education as well as by professionals and other stakeholders in the hospitality and travel industries.

A challenging and friendly professional Fulbright experience

By Prof. Vincent P. Magnini

International Projects

National Projects

Papers Presented at International Conferences, with Program Committee, in Romania

Books Published by International Publishing Houses