Virgil Balaure’s scientific contributions

Competitiveness has become one of the common concepts employed in the recent yearsto approach and describe the sustainable development of the travel and tourism industry. Culturalheritage and natural resources represent two significant pillars of the tourism’s sustainabledevelopment: that is why the development of the tourism based on the cultural heritage and naturalresources could provide a consistent support for increasing the competitiveness of the Central andEastern European countries as tourist destinations. The paper assesses how important are andwhat are the contributions of the cultural heritage and natural resources to the overallcompetitiveness of the travel and tourism industry and to its performances based on specific datareferring to the Central and Eastern European countries.

In the recent years, competitiveness has become one of the common conceptsemployed to approach and describe the sustainable development of the travel and tourism industry.Competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry, like of the tourist destinations, is defined takinginto consideration a set of reference elements related to the major dimensions of the industry, suchas the business environment, infrastructure, laws and regulations, and resources available. The paper assesses the competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry in the World’s top25 tourist destinations based on the methodology and the specific results provided in the Travel andTourism Competitiveness Report and taking into consideration the most representative performanceindicators of this industry, international tourist arrivals and international tourist receipts, providedby the World Tourism Organization.

Creation, development and employment of brands have recently become activities thattend to expand beyond the sphere of marketing communication of the organization and generatingsignificant effects over the results of marketing activities and overall performances of theorganizations.Paper intends to approach in an exploratory manner the way brands contribute to the imagedevelopment of the tourist destinations based on a comparative analysis of the performancesgenerated by the nation brands used to promote different national tourist destinations in Romaniaand other Central and Eastern Europe countries.