THE TOURISM IN THE MIDDLE OF THE GLOBAL CRISIS

Abstract

The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part is presented the evolution of tourism in Europe during 2008 as indicated by data provided by Eurostat, in the second part is made a brief analysis of the Romanian tourism development in the period August 2008 - January 2009. Is found in both the European Union and Romania, a decrease of the turnover, a decrease of the  tourist number and a decreased length of stay. In the EU, crisis started to have an effect in the second part of the year. However, the number of nights spent in hotels and similar establishments in the European Union showed a small decrease (-0.5%) compared with the previous year. In Romania January 2009 brought a sharp decrease of net use of tourist accommodation bed - place in Hotels and similar units from 50.4% in August 2008 to 17.7% in January 2009. In the last part of the paper I've presented ways to decrease and eliminate the effect of the crisis in Romanian tourism. There are presented measures taken by the Ministry of Tourism, national prizes award of goods and services quality, methods to improve services quality by implementing a quality management system. For this purpose are presented the certified companies by RENAR, which issue certificates quality and the number of firms from the tourism segment certified by them. The paper shows steps that can be followed to implement a system of management quality. ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 standards are the guideline standards that can be implemented by any firm.