Tourism as a driving force in rural development: Comparative case study of Romanian and Austrian villages

This paper is the outcome of a bilateral Romanian-Austrian research project on new and innovative initiatives in rural development. It was the aim of the study to identify success factors of strategies applied and to verify their transferability. This article presents results related to the role of tourism in rural development in a comparative way focusing on the following main aspects: (1) tourism potential in the sense of (used or unused) opportunities on the background of current touristic demand (including main tourism trends); (2) current touristic offer; (3) current touristic demand; (4) perspectives of further (touristic and extra-touristic) development. It then also asks for (5) the relation between endogeneous and exogenous factors in developing tourism; (6) effects of tourism on local population and general local development; (7) basic success factors for initiatives in tourism, but also in other fields as well as (8) main differences in rural development, especially by tourism, between the Romanian and the Austrian cases