The Evolution of Tourist Flow and Accommodation Facilities in Suceava County and their Possible Reconfiguration due to the Covid-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The study focusses on Suceava county, the administrative-territorial unit of Romania most severely affected by Covid-19 pandemic and at the same time with high tourist potential. Through this work we highlight the evolution along 20 years and the level of the tourist flow and of the tourist accommodation units, reached at the threshold of Covid-19 pandemic and it needs to be reference for possible future reconfiguration in tourism on this direction obeys the measures of limiting the spread of viral infections. The analysis and interpretation of the series of statistic data at the level of the whole county, of those 61 localities with tourist activity, especially in conjunction with the situations registered as answer to the action of implementing the policy of the development of tourism and rural space, outlines, in the year 2020, a certain tourist profile, a lot more different than the one in 2001. The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will engender possible reconfigurations of the outlined profile. The balance seems to further lean to the smaller accommodation units, not hotels (already hold 51 % from the total tourist flow in 2019), such as the agrotourist boarding houses, camping sites, tourist chalets more on the basis of religious rural tourism and ecotourism.

Keywords

• tourism reconfiguration
• impact of the covid-19 pandemic
• tourist flow
• tourism accommodation units
• forms of tourism