Research on the Place and Role of Tourism in the Rural Development of the Banat Mountains, Caraș-Severin County

In the paper we aimed to carry out comparative research on the general state of tourism in Romania, in the mountainous Banat and some Balkan countries, from which it results that Romania is far below the level of competing countries in terms of tourism development. There are many reasons for this situation, out of which two are decisive: the absence of a national strategy for the medium and long-term development of Romanian tourism and the absence of tourism among the development priorities of the Romanian economy branches, even though Romania’s natural tourism offer is exceptional. In addition to these two determining causes, there is a poor state of infrastructure of all kinds and, what is more unfavourable, an extremely weak and ineffective promotion of Romanian tourism at national and, above all, international level, as well as the existence of a large number of ecological problems and touristic sites left in ruins, all of which are detrimental to the development of mountain tourism. The removal of causes that generate the current state of tourism in Romania and in the Banat Mountains of Caraş-Severin County might be the main way of local development.