Increasing the Attractiveness of the Romanian Cultural Destinations through Co-Creation

The paper presents the Romanian cultural heritage and cultural potential of the North-West Region of Romania in terms of economic exploitation and preservation through co-creation. Co-creation is a business strategy focusing on tourists’ experience and interactive relationships. In this paper, we first discuss the issue of cultural tourism and the possible conflict between economic exploitation and cultural heritage management. After we show the reasons that made Romania a recommended destination for 2016, we list the main elements of cultural tourism from the North-West Region of Romania. Our approach was to show the way in which cultural tourism focused on the co-creation strategy can be a growth catalyst for Romanian cultural destinations. Creativity has become a very important element of regional development strategies because it can make the difference in a market becoming increasingly abundant. This difference takes into account a type of experience circumscribed to the idea of doing something with your hand /do it yourself and a form of tourism consumption meant to determine the tourist to invest time and money in a tourist-artisan partnership. The application of the strategy of co-creation is an alternative to any commercial breeding cultures. Its success depends on certain conditions such as the permanence of cultural spaces arranged in creative activities; the ability to attract the locals in order to ensure a minimum threshold of profitability; applying a policy of support for the artisans and the implementation of a management system integrated for tourism destinations.