CACTUS - Journal of tourism for research, education, culture, and soul

6-14

Authors: MARIA-IRINA ANA

Ecotourism, agro-tourism, rural tourism are forms of tourism that emerged in the last century, becoming increasingly important sectors of the tourism industry worldwide. The new kinds of life-style, the evolving tourist behaviour and continuously changing customers’ preferences coupled with the widespread concern about environment, industrial heritage and sustainable development are all factors that led to the expansion of these niche market types of tourism. The objectives of this paper are to research important implications and identify significant trends of ecotourism, agro-tourism and rural tourism in the European Union, focusing on the New Member States area, as there is a lot of potential for the expansion of these forms of tourism in the region. The Old Member States earn significant income from agro-tourism, while in the New Member States this is rather an unexploited opportunity, despite the fact that the cultural heritage and number of unspoilt natural areas is much more abundant than in the West. This paper will also look at the policies in this field, as the European Union is very interested and active in supporting agro-tourism and sustainable development, and many policies, programmes and initiatives address the three types of niche tourism. Key features, economic, environmental and socio-cultural benefits, as well as current and future challenges for ecotourism, agro-tourism and rural tourism in the entire European Union, but more thoroughly in the New Member States will also be addressed, with the purpose of creating a comprehensive paper, able to convince the scholars and practitioners in the field to pay more attention to this rather new topic, as a proactive approach can enable investments and attract more tourists to the area.

24-32

Authors: STOENESCU CRISTINA

Air transport and tourism have always been interconnected, influencing each other. Over the years, as air travel has been undergoing a series of changes, tourism organizations have also been affected, developing new tourism products, establishing partnerships and reinventing the services offered. This paper focuses on the impact of air travel on the tourism industry, taking into consideration the role of the airport in the regional economic development, the new forms of tourism developed as a consequence of the different changes in the airline industry and the recent position of air travel in the creation of tourism packages. At the same time, an analysis of data was made in order to highlight the role of air travel in tourism development in Romania.

41-46

Authors: IOANA MARIN

In this paper we show how a constant and efficient collaboration between the school and the local community is needed in order to obtain positive effects and results in the pre-scholar education. The analysis is inspired from the Italian public school in which we have been directly involved in the framework of an experience exchange program as teacher in the public Romanian pre-scholar system.

6-13

Authors: VASILE (ILE) FLORENTA LARISA

Medical tourism, considered the newest phenomena but, as well, an old activity of travelling on health purposes, is increasingly more often the subject of articles, seminars or conferences. Considering the factors that determine the motivation for medical tourism (investments in the health system infrastructure, the international certification and accreditation for medical services and suppliers, lower costs or better quality of medical procedures, political and social stability, excellent tourism infrastructure, good reputation regarding clinical excellence, implementation of the newest medical technologies, highly educated medical personnel, the insurance policies portability) and taking into account the conclusions of previous exploratory researches in health behavior, one of the possible segments of medical tourists is Diaspora. This paper highlights the decision process and preferences of tourists from Diasporas related to medical tourism in Romania. It uses data from a pilot survey that emphasis the medical travel motivations of Romanian patients resident in EU, Canada and USA. The first determinant is the cost, but there are several other motivations driving the decision to choose Romania as a medical tourism destination, such as confidence or cultural affinity.

26-31

Authors: MISOC IRINA

This research focuses on the relationship between team cohesion and team performance in the tourism field.The literature review showed that researchers have found different results on the relationship between these two variables. The present case study was based on the hypothesis that, in the organizations that offer support to their employees, the teams with strong cohesion obtain better results compared with those with poor cohesion. The study was conducted in eight teams that share similar characteristic. The survey method was used for gathering data with two structured questionnaires: one questionnaire used for measuring the performance of the eight teams and another questionnaire used for measuring the team cohesion. The 5 point Likert scale was used to analyze both team performance and team cohesion. As a conclusion, the study revealed that the hypothesis is true, and the strong cohesive teams obtained higher scores in terms of performance, but the relationship between the two variables is more complex and should be studied in detail in future studies.

40-52

Authors: ANDREI EMMA - DENISA

Recruitment and selection processes are one of the most important steps in a company beeing repeated periodically. Through them, the company attracts and hires staffing that are considered to have a major influence on the company's success. Attracting the younger generation can be challenging for companies, given their current need to be addressed in a different manner, in an innovative way. It is important to have their attributes acknowledged, but different ones and not those that are already reported in the CV. According to studies conducted by various companies, young people need leadership programs, mentoring or coaching. To better understand these concepts, I carried out an analysis of the company Catalyst Solutions which is a human resources company and it deals exclusively with the recruitment and selection processes for employing companies. Using qualitative research through a questionnaire, I could analyze the knowledge of students and graduates based on processes of recruitment and selection. In terms of research, young people want to be active in the labor market but feel a certain uneasiness when dealing with recruitment basis. They consider that processes can be sometimes too harsh and they believe that they are not appreciated at their true value.