Wooden Orthodox churches in the Maramure§ region - opportunities and threats of tourism development

Abstract

This article is an attempt to determine, analyse and evaluate the most urgent problems of tourism development in Romania illustrated by the case of the Maramureş region. The fieldwork was carried out in the period of 2013-2017. Not only basic statistical analyses regarding tourist traffic in Romania and the region have been done, but also literature studies allowing to evaluate the scale of the problems. The Maramureş regions is a real living open-air museum despite growing tourist traffic, located in the northern part of the country. Wooden Orthodox churches with high steeples are especially remarkable. In 1999, eight of them were included on the UNESCO List of World Cultural and Natural Heritage due to their uniqueness. However, this extraordinary world of wooden architecture and cultural heritage is being under pressure from increasing tourist traffic. Determining the most burning development problems of this region is the main objective of this study. The authors carried out a SWOT analysis aimed at determining opportunities and threats of tourism development, as it has been stated in the article title.

Keywords

• Maramureş
• wooden churches
• opportunities
• threats
• tourism development