Tourism in Eastern Europe: development and regional patterns

Abstract

The international tourism in Europe expresses a clear regional dualism connected with the political regions of the continent. Tourism in the socialistic countries differs from the western tourism with reference to development of tourist numbers, national distributions of tourists, and organization of tourist industry. Development of tourist numbers in all European countries brings to mind Rostow's model of stages of economic growth in developing countries. In this paper the stages of the growth of tourism are called Slow beginning, Period of strong growth, and Period of declining growth. In the socialistic countries they have begun later than in Western Europe, and the second period seems to be relatively short. On this account, tourist numbers have not risen as high as in western countries. International tourism has expanded like waves from west to east so that the relative importance of Eastern Europe has grown. Regarding Bulgaria and Romania these waves are an expression of the 'Sunshine revolution' also in the socialistic world. The ideological boundary is a very important limit of the international tourism in Europe. It is like a semipermeable membrane: it allows penetra­tion from one side (west), but not from the other (east). The socialistic coun­tries differ from others also in view of the national patterns of tourists. In the first‑mentioned countries national patterns have been very unstable, while the relative strength of most important catchment areas has not changed notably in the West. The organization and management of the tourist in­dustry in a central‑planned economy is self‑evidently dissimilar to the situa­tion in a capitalistic system. The socialistic model has, in spite of its draw­backs, advantages which are not easy to applicate in western countries. There are also some other circumstances which increase the competitive ability of the countries of Eastern Europe. In fact, it may be reasonable to think that the final removal to the period of declining growth has there not yet happened.