STUDY REGARDING THE EVOLUTION OF MOUNTAIN TOURISM AND RURAL MOUNTAIN TOURISM IN ROMANIAN CARPATHIANS

The paper aimed to analyse the evolution of mountain tourism and rural mountain tourism in Romanian Carpathians for us to understand our tourists' preferences, and their reasons for that. To be able to do that, we checked the number of tourist arrivals by years and months, in each part of the Romanian Carpathians, we analysed the dynamic of the tourists number between 2014-2019 and we checked the seasonality index, to see what season they love the most. All these research were done with the help of the reports from National Institute of Statistics (NIS). We discovered that one of the main reasons that helps people on to decide about the destination is the climate and the activities that they can perform. In addition, the fact the infrastructure is in a continuing development, and that the investments in tourism are constantly growing, and also that we have lots and many Museums, castles, monasteries, memorial houses, landscapes, hiking, waterfalls and cages make our mountains attractive for our tourists. They can recharge themselves after a hard time, after a crowded city life, in an unbelievable place: Carpathians. The study showed that the tourists are very excited about the rural tourism and all that this is offering them. We have an amazing country, with amazing landscapes that can make everyone love our mountains.