Trail Accessibility as a Tool for Sustainable Management of Protected Areas: Case Study Ceahlău National Park, Romania

AbstractAccessibility is an indicator that involves two components: the place - with its morphological and morphometric features -, and man - who wants to reach that place. The relief accessibility map is a useful tool both for tourists and national park managers. Sustainable management in a park and planning involves the opening of new hiking trails which must take into account the relief accessibility, internal zoning, land use and the presence of tourist interest objectives. In this study we produced a map of relief accessibility for Ceahlău National Park (CNP) in Romania using two indicators: the slope and the land use. The model integrates both primary data and secondary data resulted from the reclassification operations. From the intersection of these secondary data in a transition matrix we have established five types of accessibility levels that are represented for the entire park and trails in the CNP. Of the total area of the park - which is located in Romania's eastern Carpathians, within a mountain unit with less than 1900 m altitude -, over 90% encompasses high and medium accessibility levels (types 2 and 3) which shows a high potential for planning. Data resulted from this model can be used for an efficient management of trails in a national park and their evaluation according to the degree of accessibility

Online Environment as a Tool to Push Forward the Research: An Example for Landscape Disservices

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have had to find different resources in order to continue their research and the use of online information can represent a temporary solution. Our research is mainly focusing on a landscape which offers services and disservices. Recently, numerous studies that rely on landscape disservices have appeared. We associate wildlife-human-interactions (WHI) and human-wildlife-interactions (HWI) as part of landscape disservices. More precisely, in the first category (WHI) we have included the interaction of the wild animals with human and in the second category (HWI) we have created a database with animals attacked or/and killed by human. In order to sustain this analysis, we have selected data from local newspapers and Facebook groups, which supports our hypothesis that online resources could provide valuable data. The study area is represented by the Southern and Eastern Carpathians. The most affected mammals for this type of interactions (HWI) are bears, followed by wild boars and red deer, while WHI has intensified in the last five years. Based on the analysed data we can conclude that the animals who generate the most disservices to humans are bears and wild boars. The solutions we have identified, which also include online sources, for both HWI and WHI are relocation, rescue, capturing of the animals in reservations or, as a last resort, euthanasia. In order to reduce these types of interactions it is important to promote ecological education, development and promoting of certain attitudes and behaviour that have a visible impact upon HWI and WHI

Sport Event Tourism in Bucharest. UEFA EURO 2020 Case Study

Mega sport events were among the very few types of events still attracting tourists during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and represented an exceptionally attractive tourism opportunity for Bucharest through the matches scheduled for the UEFA 2020 championship. Motivated by the novelty of the event which was organized for the first time in the Romanian capital city and motivated by the exceptionally restrictive context imposed by the sanitary crisis, the aim of this study was to analyze domestic tourist participation in and satisfaction with this event. An extended survey focusing on the autochthonous participants was applied to gather data and then further computed using SPSS software through crosstabulations and associated statistical analysis adapted for nominal and ordinal variables. The main results emphasize a large participation of Romanian football supporters who came specifically for the event. Most of them expressed dissatisfaction with souvenir, food and drink products sold within the stadium area but were satisfied with the COVID-19 measures and their costs. Supporters coming from rural areas opted for VFR accommodations while retirees and elderly supporters preferred hotels. Occupation and age were the main variables determining accommodation preferences as well as satisfaction with souvenir prices. These options may be valuable input for future adapted marketing strategies for sport event tourism in Romania. Lacking important urban tourist attractions and competing with other mature European urban destinations, mega sport events may represent an opportunity for autochthonous large cities to increase tourist attractiveness and maintain leisure travel even during periods of travel restrictions