QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

GROZDANKA BOGDANOVIC,
QUAESTUS Professor PhD. University of
Belgrad, Technical Faculty Bor,
Serbia
NO. 2/ APRIL 2013 ECATERINA PUTZ,
Professor PhD. University of the
Editorial Board West, Timişoara
HONORARY EDITORS: MARIN BURTICĂ,
Prof. PhD. West University,
MOMCILO LUBURICI, Timişoara
Professor PhD, President Founder PUIU NISTOREANU,
of "Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian Professor, PhD. ASE Bucuresti
University Bucharest JOZSEF GAL,
CORINA ADRIANA DUMITRESCU, Associate professor PhD. Szeged
Professor PhD, Rector of "Dimitrie University, Hungary
Cantemir" Christian University GABRIELA POHOAŢĂ,
Bucharest Associate professor PhD.
"Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian
EDITORS IN CHIEF: University Bucharest
CIPRIANA SAVA, FILIP PAŢAC,
Associate professor PhD., "Dimitrie Associate professor PhD.
Cantemir" Christian University "Dimitrie Cantemir" Christian
Bucharest, Faculty of Management University Bucharest, Faculty of
in Tourism and Commerce Management in Tourism and
Timişoara Commerce Timişoara
LUIZA CARAIVAN, EMILIA GOGU,
Associate professor PhD. "Dimitrie Associate professor PhD. Dimitrie
Cantemir" Christian University Cantemir" Christian University
Bucharest, Faculty of Management Bucharest
in Tourism and Commerce DINA LUŢ,
Timişoara Associate professor PhD. UCDC
Timisoara
CONSULTATIVE BOARD:
MIRELA MAZILU,
CONSULTATIVE BOARD:
Professor PhD. University of MARIUS MICULESCU,
Craiova, Faculty of Social PhD. UCDC Timisoara
Sciences, D. T. Severin MIHAELA LAZOVIĆ,
GHEORGHE LEPĂDATU, Professor PhD. The College of
Professor PhD., "Dimitrie Hotel Management, Belgrade
Cantemir" Christian University Serbia
Bucharest
LANGUAGE EDITORS:
ZORAN MARKOVIC,
OANA IVAN,
Professor PhD. University of
PhD. candidate,
Belgrad, Technical Faculty Bor,
University of the West, Timişoara,
Serbia
LUIZA CARAIVAN

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QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

ISSN 2285 – 424X

ISSN-L 2285 – 424X
Tiraj: 100 exemplare

Tipar: Editura Eurostampa, Timişoara

Bd. Revoluţia din 1989, nr. 26
Tel./fax: 0256-204816
E-mail: [email protected]
www.eurostampa.ro

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QUAESTUS

MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

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QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

The QUAESTUS journal is published by the

FACULTY OF MANAGEMENT IN TOURISM AND COMMERCE

TIMIŞOARA

DIMITRIE CANTEMIR CHRISTIAN UNIVERSITY

Address: Str. 1 Decembrie, nr. 93, Timişoara, cod 300566, România

Phone: 0725923071

Fax: 0256-221355

E-mail: [email protected]

http://www.quaestus.ro/

TIMIŞOARA, 2013

ISSN 2285 – 424X

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Contents
TOURISM AND CONSUMERISM ........................................................... 7
MINERAL WATERS AND RADIOACTIVITY Mircea Goloşie, Cipriana
Sava .................................................................................................................... 9
NATIONAL AND TOURIST IDENTITY OF CITIES THE CASE STUDY
OF BELGRADE Đorđe Čomić, Slavoljub Vićić ............................................ 15
TOURISM IN THE SMALL REGION OF FEHERGYARMAT AND ITS
TOURISM VALUES Jozsef Gal, Katalin Szucs, Constanstantin - Dan
Dumitrescu ....................................................................................................... 28
IMPLEMENTATION OF MARKETING IN RURAL TOURISM Ciprian
Pavel ................................................................................................................. 36
STANDARDIZATION - THE STRATEGIC OPTIONS OF THE MODERN
HOTEL INDUSTRY Novak M. Svorcan ....................................................... 43
CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STUDY OF CONSUMPTION AND
CONSUMERS’ BEHAVIOUR Ecaterina Putz .............................................. 56
THE WICS MODEL OF LEADERSHIP: THEORY AND APPLICATION
IN HOTEL MANAGEMENT Aleksandar Kontić .......................................... 63
REGIONAL AND NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVENESS
Horia Liviu Popa .............................................................................................. 71
EDUCATION AND CULTURE .............................................................. 83
LEARNING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT COLLEGES OF HOTEL
MANAGEMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF KNOWLEDGE APPLICATION
IN PRACTICE Ljiljana Kosar, Mihaela Lazović, ........................................... 85
NEW PERSPECTIVES ON FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEARNING: A
STUDENTS’ REPRESENTATIONS ANALYSIS Laura Ioana Coroamă .... 98
INTRODUCING THE MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE TO
UNIVERSITY STUDENTS Luiza Caraivan ................................................ 106
A PLEA FOR ECONOMIC HERMENEUTICS Gheorghe Băileşteanu,
Anda Laura Lungu ......................................................................................... 112
WHY DO ROMANIANS SPEAK FOREIGN LANGUAGES SO WELL?
Oana-Roxana Ivan ......................................................................................... 119
BOOK REVIEWS .................................................................................. 125
THE ENGLISH OF TOURISM Oana-Roxana Ivan ..................................... 127
TREASURES OF THE BANAT REGION BY VIOLETA TRIPA,
ARISTIDA GOLOGAN – A TEXTBOOK Eliana Popeţi............................ 131

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TOURISM AND CONSUMERISM

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MINERAL WATERS AND RADIOACTIVITY

Mircea Goloşie
Cipriana Sava

Abstract: One of the important resources that can be found in Romania is

mineral waters and thermal waters, some of them being known and exploited
since Roman times. The use of these waters in spa tourism is conditioned by
the properties of each reservoir and this is the reason why durability is
essential. Spa tourism in Romania needs significant investments,
reorganization and orientation towards spa and wellness.
Key words: mineral waters, spa tourism, radioactivity, durability

Introduction
A first step in towards the durable development of tourism would be
making people aware of environmental protection. It is a well known fact
that tourism is based on the environment and durable tourism relies on the
exploitation of tourist resources so that it satisfies tourists’ requirements,
both at present and for future generations.
In order to have tourism develop towards this direction, plans are
conceived in order to gather tourism agencies, people inhabiting a certain
region and ecologists.
Spa tourism has been recorded for a very long time, as people’s health
has determined its development. Mineral waters have been appreciated since
Heracles, Herodotus and Aristotle’s times, who have also tried to describe
the effects of these waters on people’s health.
In the Roman Empire mud baths were very usual, as were showers and
inhalations to treat various wounds and tiredness caused by frequent battles
and military campaigns.
Empirical knowledge has switched to scientific knowledge as far as the
use of mineral and thermal waters are concerned. An attempt in this respect
was made by the Swedish chemist Berzelius in the 18th century.
At present, the forms of this type of tourism have been improved,
while the essence remains the same. Spa and wellness tourism are two major
forms that use natural resources to treat various diseases. Spa tourism is
based on the curative effect of mineral waters. The use of these waters is
based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of thermal and mineral
waters.

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Qualitatively speaking, total mineralization, the content of chemical

elements and dissolved gases, emergency temperature, osmotic pressure and
radioactivity are measured. Quantitatively speaking, we take into
consideration the admitted deposits and the B or C balance category.

Mineral waters and radioactivity

On Romanian territory there are numerous resources of mineral and
thermal-mineral waters which have various therapeutic indications. Some of
them are known and exploited since ancient times.
The success of spa tourism has been a development factor for many
regions in Romania. The procedures that are included in touristic offers are
internal treatments – aerosols, mofette, and external – baths.
During the past ten years, there have been no correlations between the
real situation of mineral water pools and their effect on people’s health. The
economic advantages have been put forward and the scientific
recommendations have been concealed. Thus, our studies show that:
- The majority of underground mineral waters have been
affected by mining activities that have penetrated into pools and have
affected the quality of water. However, abandoned mines do not
represent a stop to the negative effect. Abandoning mining activities
means that we can no longer control their effects.
- Rain water, which controls the level of phreatic mineral
water, is exposed to pollution with nutrients, heavy metals or radioactive
metals.
- Protected areas are no longer respected.
Analysis of bottled water supports our theory:
- Gamma global 80 – 31.000 mβq/l
- Β global = 220 – 2.470 mβq/l
- Unat = 0,50 – 75 mβq/l
- U238 = 0,35 – 35 mβq/l
- Ra226 = 2 – 1000 mβq/l
- Thnat = 0,05 – 5,5 mβq/l
- Th232 = 0,04 – 4,4 mβq/l
There were many sources of water in areas that were declared mining
areas. In many cases the water source became insufficient, but after the
closing of mines water levels increased. Water proved to have a high
concentration of radioactive elements. This phenomenon can be seen in
many regions where there were mining exploitations.

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The same changes occurred in the case of CO2 treatments – mofettes.

Radioactive gases such as radon and thoron infiltrated in many underground
sources of carbon dioxide. The infiltration has not been controlled, duet o
the lack of balance produced by abandoned mines galleries.
The companies that bottle mineral water are faced with the issue of
water contamination. However, they are protected by regulations that do not
specify that technical descriptions should be compulsory. Our studies note
the fact that some elements are not clear enough or are missing from the
product label. Our calculations show that there are:
- Unat = 0,135 ± 0,03 µSv/year
- Ra226 = 13,5 ± 10 µSv/year or
- Unat = 12,5 ± 2 mβq/year
- Ra226 = 9 ± 0,5 mβq/year

Fig. 1. Geo-thermal resources researched by drilling and areas for future research.
Map taken from Negoiţă, V (1970).

These are only some of the average values identified by our study.
Maximum values are around 102. Comparatively, German regulations state
that the uranium level should be 1µgr/l, which is much lower than Romanian
regulations impose.

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Another aspect is that of thermal waters. The drilling process started in

1885 at Baile Felix, at 51 meters deep, and identified underground thermal
waters. In 1893, at Caciulata, and then, in 1902 at Timisoara the drilling
process continued to identify thermal waters.
Capitalizing on geo-thermal water also included a project to use these
waters for heating houses. However, the project stopped duet o the fact that
pipes became filled with silt. Nevertheless, medical treatment remained the
highest potential for these waters. The high content of radioactive gas is
another issue. Outdoor pools should be filled with waters at maximum level.
However, duet o the fact that the thermal water level is conditioned by
consumption or weather conditions, the pools are filled with water below the
maximum level (about 0.3 – 0.5 meters below), without taking into
considerations the problems created by the accumulated radioactive gas.

Fig. 2. Conditions of accumulations of radioactive gases in a covered pool.

Fig. 3. Pool with thermal water at Baile Felix, Romania.

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Radon and thoron are harmless if they do not enter the human body by
inhalation or osmosis. The study that were carried on the health of people
who work with thermal and radioactive waters shows that there is a high rate
of diseases and deaths.
If we compare the map of aquatic potential with the map of mining
exploitations and we add geothermal anomalies, we will conclude that
studies should be made on radioactive substances in these areas. However, at
the moment economic studies are a priority. Figure 4 shows an anomaly in
the development of vegetation in radioactive waters.

Fig. 4. Vegetation in radioactive waters

Avoiding negative effects on tourists’ health should become a priority.

In order to respond correctly and clearly to tourists’ questions about
exposure to radioactive gases, two studies are necessary and urgent:
- Tourists’ exposure to all types of irradiation – medical, accidental,
professional, involuntary;
- The real situation of medical treatments on necessary doctor
prescriptions.
The nongovernmental organization “Hobby Club Jules Verne” has
gathered numerous data on this issue and interdisciplinary studies are the
basis for future researches.

Conclusions
Measurements have indicated the fact that radioactivity in various
concentrations of mineral and thermal-mineral waters may constitute an
issue for tourists’ health. Acknowledging real values of radoactivity offers
the possibility to exploit waters accordingly, diminishing the dangers to
which tourists and consumers of bottled water are exposed.

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References
Airinei S., 1987 Geothermics Applied to Romania]. Editura Stiinţifică şi
Enciclopedică, Bucureşti, Romania.
Cohuţ I., Bendea C., 2000 Romania update report for 1995-1999. World
Geothermal Congress 2000, Japan.
Negoiţă, V., 1970, Etude sur la distribution the temperatures en Roumanie,
Rev.Roun.geo1.geophys.géol.,serie geophys 14
ONG Hobby Club Jules Verne, baza de date proprie.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

CIPRIANA SAVA is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Management in
Tourism and Commerce Timişoara, „Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University. She
holds a PhD. in Management and is the author of a large number of books, articles
and studies in the field of tourism, regional and rural development. The latest titles
are: Turismul industrial – o provocare actuală, Timişoara, Eurostampa, 2010,
Turismul în contextul dezvoltării regionale durabile, Timişoara, Eurostampa, 2010.
Cipriana Sava is also a member in „Asociaţia Româna de Ştiinţe Regionale” (ARSR),
in the „European Regional Science Association” (E.R.S.A.), and in the „Science
Association International” (RSAI).

MIRCEA GOLOŞIE, is an engineer in telecommunications. He has

implemented the first integrated communication systems at “Politehnica”
University in Timisoara. He has also developed transmission systems for remote
areas, such as abandoned mines. He developed a system of mobile laboratories to
research the contaminated areas. His interests include old engineering, paleo-
engineering. He has published scientific articles and books on durable
development. He is member of various international organizations and a specialist
on emergency situations (DEF- Environmental Danubian Form; TIEMS - The
International Emergency Management Society).

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NATIONAL AND TOURIST IDENTITY OF CITIES

THE CASE STUDY OF BELGRADE
Đorđe Čomić
Slavoljub Vićić

Abstract: The paper explores some key aspects of postmodern urban theory,
empirical aspects of the common identity of European cities, their
importance for the development of intra-continental tourism, acculturation
and process of integration. In the context of the theory of consumer society
and the concept of "experience society", the cities are treated as producers of
touristic experiences. Based on the accepted explanatory framework and
criteria, the focus of research is on the particular case of Belgrade, which
simultaneously possesses the national and European identity. The results of
the research related to important events, attractions, associations and
symbols, based on the opinion of foreign tourists, are presented using
previously established methodology and empirical data. Then the Top 10
ranking tourist attractions of the Tourist Organization of Belgrade, and a list
of ten most visited attractions by tourists, are critically analyzed. The mutual
comparative analysis of Top 10 list of attractions in Belgrade by two foreign
sites, and their comparative analysis with the previous list of TOB is also
presented. In this way, by identifying the touristic focal points which stand
out as key markers of hybrid - local and European identity of the capital of
Serbia. Finally, based on the analysis of successful experiences of European
cities, one can determine the main directions for the reconstruction of the
identity of Belgrade, as well as the creation of its new brand and touristic
image.
Key words: Europe, cities, identities, tourism, Belgrade

Introduction
Modern consumer society is the "experience society" in which the
meaning of life is seen in the constant succession of experiences, and in that
context, almost all goods and services are promoted as generators of pleasant
experiences. Today we can talk about a whole postmodern "phenomenology
of consumer experience." The success of human existence is increasingly
measured by the number and intensity of pleasant experiences that occur
from the moment of birth until death. Analogously, tourism is a "hunt for
experiences" too, and traveling itself is important event in human life and
contributes to its enrichment. Experience is the main objective of tourist

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travel, its psychological essence, as tourists embark on a journey constantly

seeking new and different experiences that can’t be realized at home. In this
context, the tourism product - the city, can also be defined as a generator of
various experiences. The city produces, organizes and provides experiences
to meet the identified needs of target market segments. The experience
begins with a visual perception of tourist attractions and is linked to the
aesthetic experience of the given built environment. Here is an inseparable
blend of urban architecture, the attractiveness of the immediate environment
in which it is located, as well as human activities that take place on site.
Cities are emerging as an important origin and destination of tourist
flows, well integrated into the transportation network in the international and
transcontinental levels.
They are the kind of space where it is very difficult to identify the
tourist function. Namely, given the large number of urban functions, there is
a methodological problem of precise separation of the tourists from other
categories of visitors. For the tourist the cities are attractive not only because
of cultural and architectural monuments, entertainment, shopping and
nightlife, but for overall socio-cultural environment. The original tourism,
promoted by Stendhal in France and Italy, was mainly an urban type, while
the beaches, mountains and deserts came later. Today, cities make a
significant share of the total tourist traffic of individual countries. The
symbolic power of the cities for tourists is so strong that a large number of
countries are mixed or equalized, with its capital and largest city. There are
few tourists who will go to England and not to get around London, to France
without seeing Paris, to Germany and not visit Berlin.

Hybrid urban identity and tourism

The city is geographically specific phenomenon materialized and
localized in space. City is the subject of appropriation, has its limits and
carries a name. It is a product of culture, a spatial unit in which a certain
group of people lives, those people are inseparable from a given space
(symbolism, history, language, identity). Today, in an era of global tourism,
cities are increasingly internationally branded and are in competition with
each other. They are in fact mutually differentiated on the basis of diversity
of urban landscapes, geographical location, climate, culture, language,
cuisine, etc. The city is a concept that encompasses the whole understanding
of reality at a specific location (topos). Featuring localized characteristics,
the city is a temporary result of a transformation of space, because it is
always developing.

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The identity of the city is its uniqueness, originality, inherent

characteristics (differentia specifica). All that makes up its inner being or
essential identity (genius loci), and relies on the size, shape, geographical
coordinates, social life, people, atmosphere, rhythm of life, symbolic value,
material and spiritual heritage, present and future. However, the core identity
is inseparable from relations with other cities, because the process of
comparison comes to what makes it different from other cities in the
narrower or wider environment and the world. The "comparative analysis of
the city identity" can be done in two ways: 1) From within - by the very
people living in the city who have traveled the world as tourists and
compared their own city with all other cities that they have seen; 2) From
outside - by visitors and tourists from many countries coming to a city and
comparing it with the city from which they came, and with all the other cities
that they have previously visited. From comparative analysis and cross data
obtained in this way one can get an objective view of the city's identity or
identify the degree of its similarities and differences compared to other cities,
its strengths and weaknesses as a tourist attraction. Analyzing the complexity
of the notion of identity Stojković (1993:17) argues that: "The dialectical
nature of identity is reflected in the fact that it identifies and distinguishes,
because one individual (human or group) is identical to other individuals
(groups) only if different from other individuals (groups)". So each identity,
collective or individual, including the identity of cities and tourist
destinations, is based on the existence of the opposite, antipodes, different
others.
Although the identity is often based on "constant" elements (Šešić,
2002:21): material heritage, institutions, stable traditional forms of human
behavior, the new cultural policy at the same time have to take care of the
most valuable cultural achievements - they are in a constant process of
transformation and make the city alive and active organism, interesting for
the settlement or frequent visits. According to the Foot (2001), in
contemporary cultural life, myths and legends, memories that were formed
for centuries in European cities, are not only used as part of a cultural policy
for the preservation of cultural heritage or "cultural tourism" in various
forms, but even more in the process of "branding" that is developed in order
to qualify the city as a product. In this context, programs are created with the
aim to encourage "European identity", for example the program "European
Capital of Culture" is often used to promote a positive image as well as new
urban myths, to restore the identity of individual cities.
Cities are the basis and reference for creation of individual and
collective identity, or religious (Rome, Jerusalem, Mecca), national (Dublin,

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Barcelona, Bilbao) and trans-national cultural identity (Brussels, London,

New York, Toronto). They use the collective memory and media, including
cultural references: political symbols, events, monuments, churches,
institutions, etc. Cities are strong source of local and national identity, and
because of this, they are very attractive for tourism (tourists are commonly
found in the role of outside observers, and rarely accept active participation
and immersion in local identity and interaction with the culture of the
population).
Observation of cities in a different way, as pointed out by Radošević
(2009: 220), becomes apparent in late 80's, when the European Union had
taken a series of studies on European cities. These studies located the cities
in the regional context and analyzed the specific urban factors that accounted
for some of them to be more successful than others. Urban and regional
analysis, over the next decade, pulled the discourse of globalization which
made a great impact. The literature on the world system "pulls" the cities
from the previous national and local context and places them in the new
global network. The special character of European urban regions becomes
apparent through the interpretation of globalization.
A growing number of cities in the world seek to differentiate their own
brand and image to enhance their unique identity, in order to leave a better
impression of their own citizens, but also to attract and impress visitors by
providing a wide range of visual, aesthetic and other experience. With that in
mind, tourism has a growing impact on urban aesthetics, urban design and
architectural features of the built environment. In this context, the visual
approach to planning, places an emphasis on impressive monumental
buildings and capital structures as a major pole of attraction (touristic "focal
point" or "spatial nuclei") to visitors.
Monumental architecture with broad axes, vistas and boulevards, large
squares (Place de la Concorde in Paris, Unter den Linden in Berlin), with
strong symbolic meaning, grouped historical, religious and iconic building
(Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Opera in Paris, the Guggenheim Museum in
Bilbao, the Reichstag in Berlin), museums (the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in
Madrid) street scenes (socio-cultural appeal of the space), are all the favorite
tourist attractions. Finally, tourists are very attracted by historic centers and
the core of some cities (Florence, Venice, Prague), modern cities and parts of
cities (Brasilia, Defense) or some post-modern cities that are created as a
tourist attraction and a spectacle in itself (Las Vegas).
Tourism emerges as one of the many complementary functions of each
city, particularly global cities and large towns that have a high tourist
attraction in themselves, but also a great symbolic significance, as incarnated

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and represent the spirit, history and culture of the entire nation (Rome, Paris,
London, Berlin, Prague etc.). Big cities are also the great generators of
demand, as well as very important tourist destination (receptive centers),
whose appeal is based not only on the architecture and the cultural and
historical monuments, but also on many other aspects such as cultural
environment, events, business tourism, night life, entertainment, shopping,
etc. Here, tourism is in complementary and synergistic relationship with
other economic sectors and functions of the city.
Tourism reconstructs, restores and "resurrects" places that are in the
economic and demographic decline (Venice, Bruges). It, in fact, brought
"new life" to the neglected, or abandoned places and objects, replacing the
old industries (failed due to the exhaustion of natural resources on which
they are based or the occurrence of new technologies that have done them
obsolete and unnecessary) with tourism as a new dominant or unifying
activity that encourages the development of numerous complementary
economic sectors. In this context, it is particularly important to point out that
tourism is an "environmentally clean" activity, alternative to "dirty
industries" which left a certain vacuum and discontinuity in the process of
economic and social development.
Finally, tourism leads to the gradual removal of borders and
differences between tourist places in receptive countries and non-tourist
places in the emitting countries. This occurs due to the simultaneous action
of two convergent processes. The first is related to the transfer of culture and
civilization standards from generating to receptive countries and places in the
context of globalization and international tourism. The second relates to the
tourists, who travel abroad more and more often, and each time return to the
place of residence from which they started, bringing back new experiences
and knowledge eager to apply at home. The imported "aesthetics of
vacation" change the urban environment of generating countries - return
homogenization ("boomerang effect" of tourism). This feedback effect
operates within Europe as a result of intense intra-continental tourist
movement between cities, which often leads to a mutual takeover and to
imitation (benchmarking), leading to the homogenization of urban space.
However, each city strives to maintain its original identity and to
differentiate its own tourism product and image in relation to other
competing cities. With that in mind, the case study of Belgrade will be
analyzed.
Belgrade is in the "crisis of identity" as a former capital of communist
Yugoslavia and now as the capital of post-communist Serbia. The city still

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has a negative global image and the search for a new identity and different
image is necessary.

Belgrade’s identity between Balkan and Europe

Belgrade is in the "crisis of identity" as a former capital of communist
Yugoslavia and now as the capital of post-communist Serbia. The city still
has a negative global image and the search for a new identity and different,
better image is necessary. Serbia, often condemned by the International
community as the "main culprit" regional state (the breakup of former
Yugoslavia, civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia, the criminalization of society,
the assassination of Prime Minister Đinđić, (non)cooperation with War
Crime Tribunal in Hague, conflict and the unresolved status of Kosovo etc.),
still bears the geopolitical "stigma" within Europe and beyond, on a
planetary scale. Belgrade, the capital of the globally “notorious country”,
represents its synonym, symbol and quintessence of everything that Serbia is,
both in positive and negative sense. As Serbia is still not completely free of
the negative political and tourist image, Belgrade bears the consequences of
that in amplified form, because the capital city is for most foreigners the
"head" of Serbia, as is the case with other major cities (Paris - France, Berlin
- Germany, Moscow - Russia etc.).
When it comes to tourist attractions of Belgrade per se, it is evident
that it does not have significant number of material remains of the past like
cultural-historical monuments, monumental buildings, squares, ambient
units, and other strong focal points that would be attractive to tourists. The
destruction of the city throughout history has led to its "de-materialization",
so it lost much of the material remains of the past, and the tourist offer of this
kind is quite scarce. At the same time, there is neither impressive examples
of the contemporary architecture with aesthetic and artistic value attractive
for tourists. Unfortunately, some of the most attractive tourist nuclei in the
urban fabric are a couple of monumental buildings destroyed during the
NATO bombing, which have not yet been restored. They represent the
paradigm of aforementioned dematerialization of the city.
From the comparative analysis with other capital cities in Europe, it
can be concluded that these cities are more attractive than capital of Serbia.
Belgrade, of course, can’t possibly compete with Paris, Rome, Berlin or
Prague, it can’t be measured even with Budapest or Bucharest, but it may be
more equal in the market race with some cities in the region which are in
"the same competitive league," as Zagreb, Sarajevo, Skopje, Sofia and
Tirana. Belgrade must, above all, keep the realistic approach in search for
possible options, and in this context try to achieve ultimate goals. The

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prerequisite for this is a critical insight into current state and comparative
analysis between Belgrade and other major cities of Europe, as well as
access to case studies of cities that have found a successful formula for
identity reconstruction, as well as building a positive image and new brand.
There are many dilemmas and concerns about the current identity of
Belgrade and its tourist image. So it is necessary to study all relevant
research that can contribute to the better understanding of its identity. In this
context, a very interesting study of Belgrade’s identity is conducted by
Bojana Bursać (2002:273-291). The author explores the perception of
identity through different dimensions (collective memory, the physical
environment, the relation between the past and present, symbols etc.) and
from different angles (the inhabitants of Belgrade, city's representatives in
the field of art, culture, education, media and marketing and domestic and
foreign tourists). For purposes of this paper only the perception of the
identity of Belgrade by the foreign tourists is taken from her research, as it is
the only relevant angle when it comes to the tourist image of the city in
Europe and the world (all results shown below are expressed in percent).
Historical events by which Belgrade is known to tourists from
abroad: 1) NATO bombing in 1999. 29.4; 2) Fifth October 2000, 14.7; 3)
Period of Communism 11.8, 4) The wars in Belgrade, 8.8, 5) Turks in
Belgrade 5,9; 6) No answer 29.4.
Major tourist attractions in the opinion of foreign tourists: 1)
Ambient of Belgrade - Belgrade Fortress 24,5; 2) Entertainment in Belgrade
- Skadarlija with bars 18,4; 3) Culture and Museums, 14.3, Museum of
Contemporary Art 10,2 , Belgrade and foreign cultural centers 6.1; 4) The
parts outside the city center of Belgrade - Zemun with the Danube 8.1; 5)
Buildings destroyed during bombing in 1999. 6.1; 6) The natural
surroundings of Belgrade - Ada 4.1; 7) Other 8.2.
The first association in connection with Belgrade for tourists from
abroad: 1) City of fun and enjoyment (including enjoyment in food) 33.3; 2)
The bombing of Belgrade in 1999. 22.2%; 3) The former Yugoslavia 22.2; 4)
Sava confluence into the Danube 22.2; 6) Other 0.1.

Belgrade is famous, according to foreign tourists, by: 1) Night life

and bars 20,6; 2) Danube, 7.7; 3) Slobodan Milošević and the wars of 7.7;
4) Josip Broz Tito 14.7; 5) Citizens of Belgrade 11.7; 6) Belgrade fortress
8.8; 7) No answer 8.8.
The symbols of Belgrade in the opinion of foreign tourists: 1)
Belgrade Fortress 27,4; 2) Skadarlija and bars 13,6; 3) Church of St. Sava

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13.6; 4) Monument to Prince Mihajilo on Republic Square 13,6; 5) Cyrillic

9.1; 6) Destroyed buildings 9.1; 7) No answer 13.6.
The results of presented research indicate some positive and negative
aspects of identity and tourist image of Belgrade in the eyes of foreign
tourists. On the positive side (italics) are: fun and pleasure of the city
nightlife (bars, clubs, floating restaurants, Skadarlija), Belgrade Fortress
(Kalemegdan), Saint Sava Temple, the monument to Prince Mihajilo on
Republic Square, a convenient location at the confluence of the Sava and
Danube, city residents and institutions of culture (museums, galleries,
cultural centers). On the negative side (underlined) are: NATO bombing and
destroyed buildings, Slobodan Milosevic and the civil wars that are
associated with him, the period of communism and the Turks in Belgrade.
However, just to list the positive and negative elements of identity and image
of the city in the eyes of foreign tourists is not sufficient to estimate the
tourist value of Belgrade. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to conduct a
research related to "the intensity of each tourist attraction" (using the scale of
1 to 5, for example), whether it has positive or negative connotations. For
example, the remaining buildings destroyed by bombing in 1999. have a
negative connotation, but they may have a greater intensity of attraction for
foreign tourists than any other attraction in the city that has a positive
connotation. Using this approach we can obtain, not only quantitative
evaluations of individual attractions, but the overall tourist attractiveness of
the city. In this context, of course, data on the number of visitors who visit
each of the touristic focal points in the city are also very important.
The issues of Belgrade identity and its main tourist attractions are the
subject of research of other tourism organizations in the country and abroad.
For example, according to research completed by TOB (Tourist Organization
of Belgrade, 2011/2012) the most popular Top 10 tourist attractions in the
city are:
Top 10 attractions of Belgrade by the choice of TOB: 1) Belgrade
Fortress; 2) Republic Square; 3) Topčider park; 4) Temple of Saint Sava; 5)
Royal Palace - White Palace; 6) Skadarlija; 7) Ada Ciganlija; 8) Zemun -
Gardoš; 9) Mount Avala and 10) Rivers Sava and Danube.
Top 10 attractions of Belgrade by the choice of tourists: 1)
Shopping Center "Ušće"; 2) House of Flowers; 3) Ruined buildings in the
NATO bombing; 4) Strahinjića Bana Street;
5) Stadiums of FC "Crvena Zvezda" and "Partizan"; 6) Floating restaurants;
7) Saint Sava Temple; 8) Rivers Sava and Danube; 9) Avala and 10) Ada
Ciganlija.

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Comparative analysis of the ten most important tourist attractions of

Belgrade recommended by TOB, and those most visited by tourists, shows
certain gap between the image that relevant tourist institutions want to
project to the public and most visited attractions by tourists. In fact, only four
attractions recommended by TOB are on the preferred list by tourists
(indicated in italics). In contrast, some very important attractions such as the
Belgrade Fortress (Kalemegdan), Republic Square, the White Palace and
Skadarlija are not on the list of attractions that most tourists visit, but there
are other attractions that are objectively less valuable, such as: Shopping
Centre "Ušće", House of Flowers, buildings destroyed in NATO bombing,
stadiums of FC "Crvena Zvezda" and "Partizan" and Floating restaurants.
From the comparative evaluation of these two Top 10 lists, it can be
concluded that TOB advised important historical, cultural and artistic
attractions worth much more than those which are visited by tourists.
Consequently, the "superiority" of the first list, and the "inferiority" of
second one is evident: Belgrade Fortress - Shopping center "Confluence";
Republic Square - Buildings destroyed in NATO bombing; White Palace -
Stadiums of FC "Crvena Zvezda" and "Partizan"; Skadarlija - Floating
restaurants, etc. It is apparent that TOB seeks to promote and recommend the
most valuable cultural, artistic and ambient nuclei that will best represent the
idea of the city. In contrast, it seems that the tourists in Belgrade are not
interested in high culture and history, but they are much more interested in
"more practical and hedonistic" aspects of tourism such as shopping, sports,
entertainment, pleasure and nightlife.
In recent years, the local media in Belgrade, often with undisguised
"pride", quoted the writing of the London "Guardian" that Belgrade is on the
radar of Western European music fans, while the best known site for
backpackers offtrackplanet.com included Serbian capital on the list of Top10
destinations in the category of best entertainment. Many pepole speculate, as
Letričin (2011:88-90) believes, that the popularity of Belgrade "as the top
place to party" is due to well-known festivals, but the fact is that there are
2500 taverns in town too. The only thing that Belgrade does not lag behind
in comparison to other European capitals are places to go out, night life stops
and places to party, because of the enormous choice of cafes, clubs, bars,
pubs, discotheques, floating restaurants, concerts and festival. However, the
night life and shopping attracts mostly tourists from the countries of former
Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia) and Bulgaria and
Romania, but not the tourists from Western Europe.
The choice of Top 10 tourist attractions of Belgrade is made also by
some well-known specialized international tourist sites.

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Top 10 attractions of Belgrade (www.tripadvisor.uk): 1) Belgrade

Fortress;
2) Belgrade Zoo; 3) Bicycle paths; 4) Skadarlija; 5) Temple of Saint
Sava; 6) Ada Ciganlija;
7) Church of St.Petka; 8) The National Theatre; 9) St.Mark's Church
and 10) The river Danube.
Top 10 attractions of Belgrade (www.igougo.com): 1)
Kalemegdan; 2) National Museum; 3) Belgrade Fortress; 4) Ethnographic
Museum; 5) Tesla Museum; 6) Princess Ljubica Palace; 7) Avala; 8) Old
Belgrade and its attractions; 9) Knez Mihailova Street, and 10) City tour.
From the parallel survey of the above two sites, it can be seen that the
selection and hierarchy of attractions are not the same. The lists overlap only
in terms of the Belgrade Fortress, while all other attractions are different.
When each of these two lists is compared with the choice of Top 10
attractions by TOS, we get divergent results too. List www.tripadvisor.uk
site overlaps with a list of TOB in terms of five attractions, namely in 50%
(Belgrade Fortress, Skadarlija, the Temple of Saint Sava, Danube and Ada
Ciganlija) while the other 5 attractions are not on the list (completely
different attractions are recommended).
The selection of the ten most important attractions of the site
www.igougo.com is overlapping even less with the list TOB, only 20% or 2
attractions (Belgrade Fortress and Avala), while all other recommended
attractions are completely different. Bearing this in mind, we can conclude
that the choice of the most important attractions in Belgrade is very different
depending on the criteria, which means that we should always bear in mind
the relative, changing and dynamic nature of these lists. In that sense
Belgrade (TOS) must constantly monitor the variations of taste of tourists, as
well as the foreign websites and their perception of Belgrade, and make a
new Top 10 list every year, adapted to tourist demand.
Finally, the question is what about some of the most important streets
in Belgrade, through which many tourists pass, those streets are tourist
attractions themselves? As an illustrative example, we can take two streets in
Belgrade. On the one hand, we have Skadarlija, as a typical form of
organized, pseudo-authentic space that is intended for tourists, where
everything is subordinated to their needs in the retro style of the old
bohemian life that no longer exists. Skadarlija is actually kitschy,
romanticized nostalgic attempt to “freeze the time” or reconstruct the past.
Bearing in mind that it does not maintain the spirit of the past times,
nor the spirit of contemporary Belgrade, we can say that it is just "empty
shell" from which the true bohemian life is totally sucked out and dead. This

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is an artificial and inauthentic tourist area, bad imitation with very weak
links with the past, which is gradually transformed into Baudrillard’s
"simulacrum". In contrast, Knez Mihajlova Street is the main pedestrian zone
of the city, with foreign branded apparel shops, book stores, perfumeries and
fashionable cafes, reflecting the actual aspirations of the city towards
Europeanization. However, in recent years degradation of the epicenter of
the city occurred, because of the numerous shops, department stores, cafes
and restaurants closed their doors (the former Department stores "Beograd” -
“NAMA” and “Mitić”, restaurant "Queen of Greece," and numerous other
smaller shops). The causes of this degradation, depletion, and re-
Balkanization of Knez Mihajlova Street, are multiple: excessive rents for
commercial space, reduced purchasing power and demand, competition from
major shopping centers "Ušće", "Delta City" and others outside the city
center and with large parking area. They attract a growing number of
customers and influence the change in consumer habits. Finally, in addition
to the growing number of dilapidated, abandoned and derelict shops in Knez
Mihajlova Street still exist various legal and illegal vendors offering fake
French perfumes, umbrellas, ice cream, postcards, jewelry, souvenirs and
various knick-knack. This is an authentic, semi-organized tourist area that
reflects the local socio-cultural and economic realities and specific genius
loci. If a tourist leaves the pedestrian zone and continue towards Sremska
Street, subway passage Zeleni Venac and the green market, he will find
heaps of illegal dealers of textile and other goods, thus reinforcing the
impression of disorganization, chaos, vibrancy and authenticity. From this
example, it appears that the city authorities do not always have to
"embellish" city streets to make them more attractive for tourists, because the
authentic, unedited parts of the city are often more attractive to them.
Grooming street by the western model should be a consequence and a
reflection of the needs of local people too, and not tourists only. If Belgrade
residents have a genuine need to regulate the city and the streets for
themselves, not for tourists, then they will experience the streets as authentic
reflection of local culture, not as a backdrop, "Potemkin village" or bad
provincial imitation of the European cities.

Conclusion
Thus, the brand and tourist image of each city must be based on its
authentic identity. Identity, however, is not a given and immutable category,
it can be corrected, improved and radically changed in accordance with the
spirit of the time, the population’s needs and demands of the tourist market.
In the process of (re)construction of identity, it is necessary to critically

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examine the past and present, so that they are adequately integrated into the
vision of the desired identity which is to be constructed in the future.
European cities are very different (Lisbon - Salzburg, Madrid - Berlin,
Athens - Copenhagen, etc.) so in a way, what connects them is the diversity,
which is a significant competitive advantage when it comes to tourism
because the "difference" is its main resource. In this context, some cities are
"inert", because their efforts are concentrated towards maintaining the
existing unique identity on which they built a high-ranking tourist image
(Venice, Florence, Prague), while other cities are "dynamic" because they
seek to transform and radically change their existing identity like Berlin,
Barcelona or Bilbao. As Belgrade also falls into the category of cities with
“problematic identity”, it is necessary that it builds its own vision and
branding strategy for construction of future identity and image by using the
successful experiences of other cities. To achieve this goal all national and
local potentials must be engaged. Their creative ideas should be incorporated
into long-term strategy to meet the aspiration of local people and
expectations of tourists.

References
Bauman, Z. (1998) Globalization - The Human Consequences, New York,
Columbia.
Bursać, B.(2009) Prikaz teorijskih modela u definisanju identiteta grada, Kultura
122-123, Beograd, Zavod za proučavanje kulturnog razvitka.
Bursać, B. (2009) Istraživanje identiteta Beograda, Kultura 122-123, Beograd,
Zavod za proučavanje kulturnog razvitka.
Gerva, S. - Rose, F.(2010) Mesta Evrope, Beograd, Biblioteka XX vek.
Čomić, Đ.(2000) Putovanje kroz geopanoptikon, Beograd, SCUUH.
Litričin, L. (2011) Beogradske atrakcije, Hotel, br. 24, Beograd, Press Dub.
Liszewski, S.(2007) Tourism spaces and their transformations, Arnhem, Atlas
Reflections .
Mamford, L. (2010) Kultura gradova, Novi Sad, MediTerran Publishing
Morin, E. (1989) Kako misliti Evropu, Sarajevo, Svjetlost .
Paliaga, M. (2007) Branding & konkurentnost gradova, Rovinj, Samostalna
naklada.
Rabotić, B. (2011) Selektivni oblici turizma, Beograd,VTŠ.
Richards, G. (2007) Globalisation, localisation and culture tourism,
Arnhem,ATLAS.
Smith, M. (2006) Thirdspace and the city: Urban transformation and tourism,
Transformation of tourist spaces, Arnhem,ATLAS.
Strategija razvoja turizma grada Beograda, (2008) sažetak, radna verzija, Beograd,
Institut ekonomskih nauka (IEN).

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Šešič, M.D. (2009) Kultura u funkciji razvoja grada, Kultura 122-123, Beograd,
Zavod za proučavanje kulturnog razvitka.
Vasiljević. A. (2009) Kreiranje identiteta, »brendiranje grada, Kultura 122-123,
Beograd, Zavod za proučavanje kulturnog razvitka.
Urry, J. (1990) The Tourist Gaze, London, Sage.
Urry, J. (2000) Consuming Places, London, Routledge.
Ward, W. (1998) Selling Places, London, Routledge.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dr. ĐORĐE ČOMIĆ, (College of Hotel Management, Belgrade, Serbia,
[email protected]) full professor, published about 90 articles, projects and
books in the field of sociology, psychology and geography of tourism. He got his
doctor’s degree (1982) from the Department of Tourism at Belgrade University. He
had two specializations abroad: at the Institut Internationale de Glion and the
Université de Paris I, Sorbonne. He now works as a professor at the Department of
Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management in Novi Sad and at the College of
Hotel Management in Belgrade. He is a head of Research and Development Center
of the CHM and Editor-in-chief of scientific magazine Hotellink.

Dr. SLAVOLJUB A. VIĆIĆ, (College of Hotel Management, Belgrade, Serbia)

born in Ćićevac 1957, lives and works in Belgrade as a full professor and director
of the College of Hotel Management. After graduating from the Faculty of Law,
University of Belgrade, he obtained a degree of Master of Law and a doctorate in
Law. He is the author and coauthor of several scientific papers in the area of law,
sociology and tourism.

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TOURISM IN THE SMALL REGION OF

FEHERGYARMAT AND ITS TOURISM VALUES
Jozsef Gal
Katalin Szucs
Constanstantin - Dan Dumitrescu

Abstract: The level of economic development depends on the traditions,

education, culture and needs of a population living in the same area.
However, it is important what kind of culture is born or being strengthened in
a region. Regarding the traditional folk culture, some areas, namely the less-
developed regions can be in a better situation: it is more difficult to drift
away from the roots, from the precious traditions. It can happen in this case
that despite globalization, sometimes even traditional values are supported,
too. Thus, they are not destroyed but the old scenes and customs of life are
sustained making a balance between old and new. It is important to keep
lasting values alive, which have proved something, and also to intermediate
knowledge for others, even for the new generations. This article is aiming to
describe the Small Region of Fehergyarmat as one of the most outstanding
bases of rural tourism, and also to show how opportunities can be enlivened
in the border village tourism.

Introduction
„One of the determinant elements and trends of Hungary’s future can
be the network of tourism-centered small regions which reestablish not only
society but also life world thus becoming more intelligent.” (Czinkota 2002)
In this context, it can be said that the tourism, recreation and leisure services
are playing important or increasingly important role in the rural economies.
(Kis 2006)
It is not enough to state the intention and the will since the realization
itself depends on the conditions and possibilities of each region, all in all, on
the small regions. In addition, chances of the small regions depend on partly
their role in space structure, their natural and social-economic positions.
Those who come to this area today or visit their paternal home can hardly
recognize it. Once it brought up writers and poets like poets Kolcsey, Moricz
and Petofi who willingly passed their time here, in this land.
This world is a different world now but people living here could
remain themselves. Though, it is true that the space of living and the look of
the settlements have changed, the nature’s beauty stayed there unchanged
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and perhaps that is why it became one of the favorite recreation destination
of tourists.
Today tourism is said to be the voyage to future which became present
where in several places the new world makes interactive participation
possible. (Varga 2002)

Picture no 1, Geographical position

Source: www.fehergyarmatiterseg.hu

People need to get to know the life in a village which has brought rural
tourism into life, as today’s obvious tourism product and which operates it as
an important element of rural development.
We are planning to examine tourism and tourism values of the Small
Region of Fehergyarmat and to put it into the public attention.

Description of the small region of Fehergyarmat

This region is shown on the map as a part of the Upper Tisza Area. The
people living here also call „Erdohat” the area with gallery forests between
the former Ecsedi-marsh to the river Tur. (The integrated program of
regional development, rural development and environmental management in
the Small Region of Fehergyarmat (2005).
People, the local community have always attached to the natural
surroundings. In this respect, rural tourism gives the opportunity to live on,
thus improving life quality for people living in villages. It also intends to
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make values of the families in villages visible and available for the
environment. Moreover, it offers a chance of co-operation. It provides those
interested in rural tourism with the feeling of value-experience. This study
also refers to the tradition-centered tourism of this small region. It examines
what importance the tradition-preserving and developing program have in
protection and formation of identity in the cultural complex which survived
different periods of history and which preserves the importance of the
village. (Csorgo 2002) On the other hand, rural tourism reveals the natural
beauty of the border areas and the one beyond them, too. It gives the chance
for mutual presentation of villages which preserve and develop traditions. It
helps them sell their products, promotes international meetings and
strengthens co-operation.
In order to maintain themselves in the period of financial problems the
settlements of the small regions have united which resulted in the birth of the
Small Region of Fehergyarmat. This region abounds in both natural and
tourist sights; it is a paradise for water-lovers. The crystal clear water of the
Tisza, the monuments of tiny villages hidden in the bends, the romantic
atmosphere of the river Tur all offer the opportunity for an active recreation
for tourists flying from the noisy towns. (Sights in County Szabolcs-
Szatmar-Bereg 2004)
The number of settlements of the small region situated in the eastern
part of the country is 49. It is typical that in this group of small villages the
number of population does not reach 500 in 17 settlements. Its only small
town is Fehergyarmat, which is the centre of the small region, the population
of which is 8800 people. The second largest settlement is Tunyogmatolcs
with its population of 2700. Only other 5 settlements exceeds the level of
1000 inhabitants. This kind of group of settlements is unique on the
Hungarian Plain. (Regional development program of the Small Region of
Fehergyarmat, 2005)
The biggest problem of the region is the low level of employment.
Though the proportion of the unemployed shows a decreasing tendency at
the county level, but actually it is well over the national one.
Regarding the educational level this area has the highest proportion of
those who could not complete their primary education, the rate of those who
finished the 8 grades is the lowest in the country, and finally, the proportion
of those who have a school-leaving exam is also the lowest here. (Regional
development program of the Small Region of Fehergyarmat, 2005)
In Fehergyarmat a hospital with 237 beds attends the inhabitants of the
region. People living here can reach the capital, which is 300 km away, from
Fehergyarmat in 4 hours, by train it is 4 hrs and 45 min with changing the

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trains once. There is no direct train or coach line from Fehergyarmat to the
capital.
Each settlement is provided with system of water and gas-pipes. The
electricity-provider is EON Zrt. The network of fixed telephones is provided
by T-Com Zrt. The mobile telephone service is fully covered. Most
settlements have cable television, internet access.
At county level the sewage disposal is the least solved here. The waste
management is solved only partly. It is not typical here to collect selectively.
(Szucs K. 2010)

Tourism in county Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg

The most frequently related expressions are „dark Szabolcs”, „the
black train”, unemployment. The poorest and the most underdeveloped
region of the country. Flooding, inner waters, prejudices all can be found
here.
However, those who make a visit here, in the easiest part of the country
are surprised very much. Dynamic, developing small towns, a prospering
county seat, clean, neat tiny villages, almost untouched nature, population
welcoming tourists. (Sights in Hungary, 2001)

Picture no. 2, Natural values

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Conditions of tourism can be considered as average ones. It is far from

the capital and the western border so it is in a disadvantageous situation. The
traffic across the border is lively and busy but the main motivation is neither
tourism nor recreation but shopping. It involves short time of staying here,
and it is of low tourism spending. So do not give the transit of tourism
revenue, a significant part (Zsoter B. 2007).
Rivers (Tisza, Szamos and Tur) are significant factors in the tourism of
the county building on which water tourism of increasing significance is
forecast.

Tourism situation of the small region of Fehergyarmat and its

intention for rural development
In Hungary rural tourism got a new push at the end of the 80s.
Nowadays people in villages are getting more and more interested in tourism
in the small regions. The tourists’ desire, which is not at home. Love nature
and peace and quiet (Zsoter B. 2006). This „feeding” to rural tourism has
more reasons: on one hand, unemployment is very high and this form of
tourism offers some employment, on the other hand, people who live on
farming can complete their income with it. Thirdly, even ventures try to gain
benefit from rural tourism.
People running away from their everyday life look for their physical-
mental recreation in the frame of tourism. They feel that life in the
countryside provides town people with mental refreshment. The experience
shows that the future is in the hand of people living in regions which
preserve and improve traditions. In this region the tradition still preserves the
collective memory of communities, and also it is the treasury of material,
spiritual and cultural resources.
What we call tradition industry is getting shape: conscious
improvement of traditions, what is more invention of new ones. Thus
promotion of traditions is realized in parallel with establishment of
traditions. These people not only utilize the advantages of globalization but
also they are able to reorganize, reconstruct themselves grabbing to their
cultural roots. They are striving to inform other people about holidays,
events, local folk costumes, craftsmen’s traditions: Gyarmati Vigassagok
(Jolly Days of Gyarmat), Szamos Parti Talalkozo (Meeting on the Banks of
Szamos), Nemzetkozi Retestalalkozo (International Strudel-Festival),
Nemzetkozi Halaszlefozo Verseny (International Fishsoup Competition),
Nemzetkozi Szilvalekvar Fozo Verseny (International Plum Jam
Competition), Nemzetkozi Diofesztival (International Walnut Festival ),
Penyigei Szente-parti Nagyvasar (Fair of Penyige on the Banks of Szente)

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etc. Exhibition of products, goods typical to the region: embroidery, home-

made dogwood berry or plum jam, ornaments made from textile or wood
(Korosi 2005). Local gastronomy: doughnuts, „lapcsanka” (local specialty),
fried dough („langos”) with dill and cottage cheese, etc. These all have not
only tourist but also economic pulling force.
Typical sights: Memorial House of Moricz Zsigmond in Tiszacsecse,
Water-mill in Turistvandi, Cemetery in Szatmarcseke and the Sepulchral
Monument of Kolcsey, Saint Peter and Paul Church in Fehergyarmat,
Kisszekeres Church, Luby-castle in Nagyar, Jam Museum in Penyige, etc.
The inhabitants have covered the old market and built programs on it.
These mean regional attractive force which would be useful to transform into
a complex system of offers. It can be experienced that there are settlements
which made profit from tourism. With their products they can offer famous
specialties for visitors.
Nowadays the untouched natural environment is a rare phenomenon.
The historic sights preserve traditions for the new generation.
It can be seen that global tourism is going under transformation. The
complex service is put in the foreground: only one traditional program does
not satisfy the visitor’s need. An interest towards a certain information
service can be experienced. Today it is essential to be on the world-wide
web, one of the means of inviting visitors is the internet.
Those can prosper who decided to form their ideas together with the
service sector.
The new direction of development of tourism should be built on the
conditions and opportunities of the region, besides, the results should be
utilized, too. Certain houses provide special experiences; landscape
architecture strengthens the feeling of being close to nature which offers an
imperishable experience.
Since 2005 the venue of the International Meeting of Millers
(Nemzetkozi Molnartalalkozo) has been the watermill in Turistvandi, as a
unique sight in Europe.
Between 1990 and 2000 the starting point of the international Tisza-
tours was Tiszabecs. 1230 people of 10071 tourists were foreigner in this
period. There were tourists from America, Far-East, Argentina and from
other countries, as well. (Egri 2000) The International Tisza Tour is the least
frequented tourist event in the region, though it is one of the favorite places
of water-lovers. They have been returning for years but they can hardly see
any changes in the area. As a connecting tourism development cultural,
religion and eco-tourism, hunting, fishing, riding and cycling tourism can be
mentioned, too.

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Conclusions
This region is really attractive and beautiful. What mean the real
appealing forces of the region are the untouched beauty of nature, clear,
winding rivers? The experience proves that those who visit this land can
return fresh and relaxed. Some of the inhabitants know and hope that tourism
can become one of the sectors of success in the region. There are many tiny
villages with various sights, attractions which are unique. Churches,
mansions, natural rarities all can be found in this region. Most of the
settlements have their own water banks a part of which is navigable, too. It
attracts water-lovers and fishermen, as well. People can get to know the old,
traditional products, their production, folk costumes, old foods. These events
give a good example of co-operation of village councils. They showed that it
is possible to live well even in the „backward” area, and not only live from
day to day. I hope that Tiszahat will soon become a frequented holiday
destination for tourists in our country.

References
Czinkota K. (2002): Turizmuskozpontu kistersegek halozat az informacios korban
(Network-centric micro tourism in the information age); eVilag, I. evf. 4.
szam, p. 29.
Varga Cs. (2002): Mintha-vilagok helyett minta-vilagok, Az uj turizmus koncepcio
(Maybe-world or sample world. The new concept of tourism) (tézisek),
eVilag, I. evf. 4. szam, p. 21.
Fehergyarmati Kisterseg integralt telepulesfejlesztesi, videkfejlesztesi es
kornyezetvedelmi kozpontja (2005).
Csorgo Z. (2002): Hagyomanykozpontu turizmus (Tradition-oriented tourism),
eVilag, I. evf. 4. szam p. 24.
Fehergyarmati kisterseg foldrajzi helyzete (Geographic location of Fehergyarmat
subregion), www.fehergyarmatkisterseg.hu 2013.02.18.
Fehergyarmati Kisterseg teruletfejlesztesi programja (Regional development
program of Fehergyarmat subregion) (2005).
Kis K. (2006): Videkfejlesztes es a videkgazdasag. (Rural development, rural
economy) Szegedi Tudomanyegyetem MFK DARSZK, Hodmezovasarhely
(ISBN:963 482 795 0).
Latnivalok Szabolcs-Szatmar-Bereg megyeben (Attractions in Szabolcs-Szatmar-
Bereg county) (2004).
Sava,Cipriana (2010) The tourism -In the context of sustainable regional
development, Publishing Eurostampa, Timişoara.
Sava,Cipriana (2012) Ideas on the mulinologic tourism development in the region
west, Publishing Eurostampa, Timişoara.
Sava, Cipriana (2012) Bega Valley, Publishing Eurostampa, Timişoara.

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 QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

Zsoter B. (2006): Turizmus Mezőhegyesen – A Hotel Nonius bemutatása. (Tourism

in Mezohegyes – Inroduction and Presentation of Hotel Nonius) Europai
Unios Kutatasi es Oktatasi Projektek Napja c. nemzetkozi konferencia,
konferencia CD kiadvany, 2006. 10. 06., Hodmezovasarhely.
Zsoter B. (2007): Examination of Hotel Nonius. Management of Durable Rural
Development, Management Agricol, Timisoara, Editura Agroprint Timisoara,
2007., 571-574, ISSN 1453-1410.

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

JOZSEF GAL (Dr. habil. PhD): engineer, economist, MBA, associate
professor; University of Szeged, Faculty of Engineering Department of Economics
and Rural Development, Mars ter 7. 6724 Szeged, Hungary; phone: +36 62 546
000; email: [email protected]

KATALIN SZUCS (MSc): graduated engineer of agriculture and rural

development, University of Szeged, Faculty of Engineering Department of
Economics and Rural Development, Mars ter 7. 6724 Szeged, Hungary; phone: +36
62 546 000.

CONSTANTIN – DAN DUMITRESCU (PhD), engineer, University professor,

“Politehnica” University of Timişoara, Faculty of Management in Production and
Transportation, Department of Management, Remus str. no. 14 Timişoara,
Romania, phone.+40721519295, email: [email protected].

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QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

IMPLEMENTATION OF MARKETING IN RURAL

TOURISM
Ciprian Pavel

Abstract: Because estimates of growth in the choice of

Romanian and foreign tourists to rural pensions can be
observed the growing need to ensure higher efficiency of
marketing activities. And given the growing importance of
actions to protect the product quality and the environment is
observed the need for marketing of rural tourism that respects
the perspectives of conservation of natural, cultural and human,
necessary for responsible and ethical tourism.
As competition and demand conditions change over time, the
strategic marketing programs must be adapted appropriately to
the corrections in the marketing plan for the results of
marketing to lead to sustainable tourism.
Key words: rural tourism, eco and agro-tourism, marketing,
strategic marketing program

Introduction
Rural tourism market is the result of interference of the two
components: demand and supply of rural tourism. The evolution of rural
tourism activity is not reflected only by analyzing fluctuations indicators that
emphasizes supply situation: number of rural tourist accommodation
structures, existing accommodation capacity, accommodation capacity in
operation. There are also two other important indicators with which (to
complete the image of changes) the rural tourism activity is facing. They
capture the state of rural tourism demand and are represented by the number
of tourists arriving in reception rural tourism in Romania and the number of
overnight stays related to those units.
National Association of Rural, Ecological and Cultural (ANTREC),
estimates an increase of about 15% of Romanian tourists opting in 2013 for
rural pensions in the context of a general increase in domestic tourism 1.

1
http://www.capital.ro/tendinte_ale turismului_rural

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Implementation of marketing in the rural areas provides superior

efficiency in the activities concerning the rural tourism. Peculiarities of
application of marketing are defined both consumption and tourism market
characteristics and the specific nature of the activities of agritourism
businesses.

Perspectives of expansion of rural tourism business

Necessity of extending rural tourism business is the result of creating
favorable conditions for harmonization of elements including: offer various
types of accommodation; supply of agricultural products, traditional folk art,
crafts and folklore is done directly by the farm family and rural community;
the offer of natural surroundings and environmental requirements are
compatible with tourism activities; offer of paid jobs in rural areas.

Table 1. Establishments of tourists reception and tourist accommodation capacity in

Romania in 2011
Existing
Number of
Type of accommodation
establishments in Rooms
establishment capacity(number of
2011 in Romania
beds)
Agro-tourist
1210 20683 9668
boarding
Hotels 1319 175149 88428
Tourist boarding
1050 20499 9788
houses
Others 1424 67172 18054
Total 5003 278503 125938
Source: National Institute of Statistics 2

Situation of tourist accommodation structures and accommodation

capacity in Romania shows large share of agro-tourist boarding in total
number of accommodation.
Of growing importance given actions of protecting product quality and
the environment results the need for marketing of rural tourism that respects
conservation the perspectives of natural, cultural and human, necessary for
responsible and ethical tourism in agriculture and resources in such a manner
that to be sustainable in the long term. Rural tourism can not be divided by
ecotourism.

2
www.insse.ro/cms/rw/pages/turism

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In the specialized literature there are at least two views on the

phenomenon of agritourism: first show that the public interest in the
environment can be used to make a product marketing; other claims that
same interest can be used for conservation of the resources on which is based
the product. These two views are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary can
be complementary. What is needed is an effective integration of both views
so that agriculture and resources can develop sustainable long term.
Fundamental for a sustainable tourism industry is accepting the key
principles underlying the concept of rural tourism:
- Not to deteriorate the resources and be developed in a manner that
protects the environment;
- Provide long-term benefits resource, (entrepreneurs) local community
and agriculture (benefits may be related to preservation of scientific, cultural,
social and economic);
- Provide tourists a direct participation and relevant experience;
- To spread education among all participants: tourists, farmers, local
communities, NGOs, agriculture and tourism (before, during and after);
- Encourage all participants to recognize the intrinsic value of the
resource;
- Involve acceptance of the resource based on her own terms and the
recognition of its limits, in this way spreading a marketing oriented supply
and consumption;
- Promote ethical responsibility and moral behavior of the participants
to the natural and cultural environment.
These principles, despite the high standard, increasingly begin to
practice in eco and agro-tourism operations and are given as an example of
best practice in sustainable tourism.
In rural tourism, whit a good marketing and a development plan can be
obtained considerable actual and potential economic value. Benefits may
include:
- Economic diversification in rural and peripheral regions of
industrialization;
- Long-term economic stability;
- Trend to higher expenses and longer stay in rural areas;
- Demand for local goods and services that benefit the local economy;
- Infrastructure development;
- Increase farmers' incomes.
In recent years the concepts of eco and rural tourism have become key
elements in selling certain products; somehow this reminds us of the
tendency of manufacturers to mark products as "green" or to show that take

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into account environmental cues. It is clear that 'green' sells. Almost every
time the prefix "eco" will increase interest in the sale, although in recent
years has been a proliferation of advertising in tourism with reference to:
eco-tour, eco-travel, eco holiday, eco-adventures, adventures
environmentally sensitive eco-safaris, eco-expedition and of course
ecotourism.
Rural tourism as tourism generally assumes a prominent profile in
economic growth expectations in this regard occur the expectations that
tourism establishments to be developed and managed to high environmental
standards. Such expectations must be willing to know the meaning of
obstacles that stand in the way of rapid and widespread implementation of
best practice environmental management in the tourism industry.
Consequently tourism industry development requires increased requirements
reflected a concern for long-term support resources available to tourism.
Changes in industry and agriculture must justify the resources claimed as a
requirement for their sustainable management. The major advantage of
adapting marketing strategies of rural tourism is that it can identify from the
beginning a number of problems that may occur during the execution of
development projects.
Any development program is based on evaluation of existing
resources, without which no project is feasible. The development of rural
tourism in the area chosen is achieved through a series of projects whose
application ensures the success of the program. To run a project is necessary
to know and understand the requirements of the marketing policies and facts
in organizations that will carry out the project and the environment in which
it will operate.
One direction of rural tourism development should be characterized by
at least two aspects:
-First you need to have continuity, because generally cover’s a bigger
time horizon and for achieving them is necessary to have continued efforts.
Romanian Governments efforts in transition was aimed at highlighting the
errors of previous governments, renouncing in many cases the investments
already made and redirecting funding sources. Good initiatives should be
taken and continue regardless of political party in power.
-Second, a unified direction for tourism development must be closely
linked with the developments in other industries, which provides the
infrastructure for tourism services.

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Implementation of marketing in rural tourism

Being in the sphere of the services market, tourism market takes a
series of features determined by the general features of services. Most
companies who are present on agritourism market are offering
comprehensive packages of goods and services. The main motivation for the
utilization of agro-tourism companies is the tourist (client) that identifies and
uses service offered. When tourists is purchasing at his home in advance, a
voyage, a place to stay, a way of transportation, etc., he get the benefit of
them, but not the tourism service itself. The tourist will benefit of tourism
service when he reach the chosen tourist destination. The transfer tourism
product from the supplier to the consumer is made different from the specific
distribution of material goods.
"The product (service) is a immaterial consumer good, invisible,
imperceptible that consumed leaves behind a bill in the pocket of tourists and
a pleasant memory (or bad) about what was offered" 3 . Therefore, the
abstract nature of the benefits of travel determines different perceptions and
evaluation from consumers, over the same benefits. The decision to purchase
a travel product or service is influenced by the fact that it can not be seen,
examined and compared before being acquired.
Full satisfaction of tourism demand is achieved through a
comprehensive package of goods and services resulting from their
combination and which are owned by different tourism enterprises. To
ensure complete tourism offer, a tourism company uses the services of many
businesses (accommodation, food services, transportation, telecommunica-
tions, commercial etc.)
In order to increase the competitiveness of rural tourism products not
only domestic and international, tourism entrepreneurs are interested in
launching original packages and with a high quality.
Romanian rural tourism entrepreneurs should be familiar with all the
particularities of the product policy and it’s components of agro and rural
tourism product for being able to adapt better the products to the market
demands.
Making an effective marketing strategy program for rural tourism
product market involves three elements:
• Specific objectives which must be fulfilled for a target market. They
must be subordinated to the objectives of the marketing plan of the company

3
V. Olteanu, Marketing în alimentaţie publică şi turism, A.S.E. Bucureşti l984

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and so specific that it can allow the management company to monitor and
assess the evolution of the tourism product on the market;
• Established marketing strategy marketing plan to achieve competitive
advantage in target markets.
• Develop tactical marketing programs necessary to carry out strategic
marketing program according to tactical marketing plans and / or strategic.
As competition and demand conditions change over time, should be
adapted and strategic marketing programs corresponding to the corrections in
the marketing plan.
For a business plan can prepare one or more marketing programs. In
the case of a single marketing program, it should contain all necessary
actions to achieve the objectives of the marketing plan, and for developing
several marketing programs, they are prepared for each market and the
marketing mix element.
Combining services is an essential element in achieving a greater
diversity of tourism product and is at the same time, a key factor in meeting
the highest level of consumer needs and desires 4. This combination increases
the attractiveness of tourism product while lowering its perishability negative
effect.
Marketing program should include both the actions of possible
combinations of tourist services as well as their capitalization with other
successful programs of destination (entertainment, cultural activities, sports
etc.).
In all cases, marketing programs are needed to increase economic
efficiency of enterprises in the short, medium or long term, constitute
instruments for implementing the marketing plan broken down into time
periods, for dimensioning financial resources.
In many tourism businesses, especially those with limited operations,
is tried the preparation only of marketing programs.
Establishment of action without goals and strategies developed by
following the steps provided in the marketing plan is, in most cases, an error
with negative consequences for the future.

Conclusions
The effectiveness of a marketing program is given by the degree of
achievement of targets set in the marketing plan. It is determined by

4
Balaure V., I. Cătoiu, C. Vegheş, Marketing turistic, Editura Uranus, Bucureşti, 2005

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comparative analysis of costs and sales revenue, after which compares the
effort and the effect achieved by implementing a marketing program.
Efficiency is a major criterion in all phases of program marketing, in
the sense that highlights the efforts of both financial effects of various
actions and the program as a whole helping to a proper foundation for future
decisions and marketing programs.
In the vision of marketing, profit maximization, as a reason of the
existence of any enterprise, equivalent to a modern management, fully
adjusted to market requirements, of consumers.
Marketing contribution to the achievement of such management is
focused on providing market information necessary for the economic
decision-making, in the elaboration of the criteria for evaluation of the
activities, in determining the levels of economic and social performance, etc.
Applying tourism marketing functions and using its methods and
techniques, rural tourism firms may assess, in better conditions, requirements
and demands of domestic and international tourism market, to adapt to these
changes to use with maximum efficiency, its own resources to meet the most
varied requirements.

References
Balaure V., I. Cătoiu, C. Vegheş, Marketing turistic, Editura Uranus, Bucureşti,
2005
Ion Niță, Piața turistică a României.Realități.Mecanisme.Tendințe,ediția aII-a,
Editura Economică, București 2008
Olteanu V., Marketing în alimentaţie publică şi turism, A.S.E. Bucureşti l984
www.insse.ro/cms/rw/pages/turism
www.capital.ro/tendinte_ale turismului_rural

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

CIPRIAN PAVEL is lecturer at the Faculty of Management in Tourism and
Commerce, Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University Timişoara. He holds a PhD. in
Marketing since 2010, with a thesis entitled Contribuții cu privire la politica de
comunicare în marketingul produselor și serviciilor bancare. He is author or
coauthor of various books and articles: Politica de comunicare în marketingul
produselor și serviciilor bancare, Editura Universităţii de Vest, Timişoara, 2013,
Bazele marketingului, Editura Eurobit, Timişoara, 2011. He is a member in AGER
and American Marketing Association.

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 QUAESTUS MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH JOURNAL

STANDARDIZATION - THE STRATEGIC OPTIONS

OF THE MODERN HOTEL INDUSTRY
Novak M. Svorcan

Abstract: Strategic positioning of recognizable tourist identity of Serbia is

based primarily on the integration of available resources, advantages and
benefits. Their networking in a single field of activity greatly facilitates the
identification, analysis, selection, comparison, adjustment, modification,
expansion and innovation of the single destination attributes. The basic
guidelines and specific proposal branding standardization accommodation
deals are formulated with respect to the specific position in the Serbian
tourist hotel product developments. The development and implementation of
standards is becoming a business imperative because it allows faster
influence in today's global economy through clear, unique and specific
identity. By finding ways to overcome the consequences of transition and
turbulent heritage, we provide the basic prerequisites for the creation of
market-verified image, as well as the unequivocal recognition of Serbia as an
attractive destination of tourism.
Key words: strategy, standard, hotel product, corporate brand

Strategic Management Standardization

The necessity of common life in all societies inevitably seeks to
establish certain norms of behavior, shaping customs and traditions as well
as evaluating and measuring the different spheres of human existence. In the
nineties, under the auspices of the Institute of American National Standards
(IANS), the standardization of a different approach known as strategic
management standardization was promoted. Although originally inclined
towards internal standardization, it quickly became a highly effective system
of achieving the strategic objectives of U.S. companies through corporate
brands. IANS defines the strategic management of standardization as a
separate discipline of management that is focused on the research of all
aspects of standardization within a market or industry entity (Svorcan
2011:48). At the same time, we define, recommend and implement all the
policies which can possibly be used to attain available advantages and
benefits of standardization in order to achieve a higher level of
competitiveness.
Inclination of the largest multinationals towards the global market and
their compatibility with the spirals of globalization validate the following

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settings on which the strategic management standardization is based (for

more details see: Svorcan 2008:11, Ind 1996:49):
• reduce internal standards in the application of external benefit,
• support innovation and creation of standards within the company,
• application and use of standards at the corporate level,
• networking standards through business strategy,
• marketing, sales, control and audit of established standards.
Most authors believe that the standards are the basic comparative size
or normal in the evaluation of personnel, assets, operating results or financial
performance of a hotel (Svorcan 2011:45). In this sense, we can single out
two concepts which complement the definition of standards:
• Unification is a process of equalization (of dimensions, measures,
sizes or shapes) and their combination with the primary objective which is to
form more products out of a limited number of elements.
• Typology represents an enlarged unification with the main
objective to rationally choose some products.
Unification and typology, with standardization, represent processes
whose main goal is the removal of systematic differences between individual
subjects and concepts that have a unique purpose. Such insight is primarily
focused on achieving the overall economy, easier communication in work
processes, raising the level of safety, health and environmental protection.
Over time, the field of action is extended to the protection of the interests of
society and consumers, as well as the elimination of barriers and removing of
obstacles (globalization). In most cases, the application of standardization
strategies is explained by:
• The need for an effective consumer protection, consumers or end-
users regardless of whether it relates to health, safety and economic interests,
• The need to protect the environment,
• The need to create conditions for a stable supply and functioning of
markets,
• Ensurance of competitiveness in the global market.
Strategies of standardization can be treated as a highly effective tool
and mechanism aimed at developing technological processes and systems,
economic relations and overall planning of global markets. In this respect, it
is predominantly used as a kind of instrument of rationalization and the
introduction of order in a variety of criteria in a number of areas. If we
contemplate all these areas, we can see a common denominator in the form
of documents that define specific rules, guidelines or characteristics for

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activities or results to optimize the level of regulation. Based on the

documents, we can formulate (Holjevac 1998:66):
• classic standards that indicate the major determinants of the quality
of a certain category of application,
• regulations on the basis of which we determine the basic
composition, types, amounts, conditions and processes and sub-processes,
packaging, labels, and much more depending on the category of application,
• manufacturer’s specifications aimed at material products, their
ingredients, processing technology, packaging, distribution, durability, etc.,
• technical norms which are measures of protection and safety during
production, storage, transport, storage, or use of the service,
• certificates aimed at confirmation of certain tests, treatments or
measurements that have been identified and confirmed by the requirements
of valid and authorized institutions at national and international levels,
• warranty obligation certificates which oblige the manufacturers to
meet these standards and achieve the anticipated level of quality.

The Standardization Strategy in the Serbian Hospitality Industry

Standardization strategy is frequently used in the operations of U.S.
hotel chains and groups. At the same time, standardization is the most
recognizable strategy because it involves an emphasized and dominant
approach aimed at meeting the needs of corporate brand positioned at the
national or international market. Strategy formulation includes the mutual
coordination of opportunities and threats in the external environment,
internal capabilities and intentions (Đuričin, Janošević, Kaličanin,
2010:310). This means that the hotel chain which is characterized by a strong
corporate brand chooses one strategy that enables an optimal relationship
between its opportunities and projected goals, on one hand and marketing
environment, on the other hand. Implementation of the standardization
strategy is analyzed as a kind of specialization because it lowers costs and
creates a scale economy in the providing service, research, development,
innovation, marketing and distribution.
The global dimension of standardization strategy is analyzed as a
unifying offer because it allows providing unique and high-quality services
regardless of location. However, its most important effect is the promotion of
internationalization and corporate image. By applying these strategies
subvarieties, today's corporate hotel brands enabled the leaders of this
industry to very successfully establish the limits of global market scale with
respect to their availability and accessibility. In the case of localization

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strategy of standardization additional adjustments are frequently imposed

due to current legislation on a specific market.
There is great disparity in the application of the strategy of
standardization which can be compensated by self-initiated adjustments.
Leaders of hotel operations operate on different markets simultaneously, but
with variable intensity bids and the necessary modification strategies are
needed. These types of modifications are based on the cost of providing
adequate policies and possible adjustment sets of identity features of a
corporate brand within the price competitiveness and acceptability by the
target segments (See: Svorcan, Stojanovic, Smiljanic, Sedlarević 2011:36).
At present, in the semy-globalist business system, there are very few
successful hoteliers who do not operate in a network. International hotel
chains and groups as well as technological, organizational and market-
consistent and well-established corporate hospitality, business style and
recognizable brands in the domestic and international tourism market,
contribute to the diversity of business activity because they differentiate their
utility according to the needs of a number of segments. The objectives and
advantages of this way of doing business are manifold. It turned out, that
everyone entering the national market, as well as Serbian, did not only
achieve one goal, or used only one advantage. In practice, there is always a
combination of achieving more goals and more benefits.
New business philosophy has led to the standardization and
standardized Serbian hotel products. The aim is to transform the old values
and benefits into a new excellence. This is why many investors are trying to
purchase facilities under best conditions and adapt them into representative
hotel-type accommodation. Consequently, the expansion of tourism and
hotel management occurred in the areas which were not in this line of work
(Svorcan 2011:296). Therefore, from the standpoint of future investments,
one should not be surprised by the bold predictions of some authors that the
real potential of Serbia for the development of tourism by 2015. is the
achievement of almost 20 million overnight stays, with expected revenues of
1.5 billion Euros (VRS 2008:117).
Implementing different types of contractual arrangements, Serbian
hoteliers became members of the large, international system. Concentricity
of exclusive global corporate brands is expected in the metropolis, due to
development of infrastructure, and because of the greater frequency of
reviews.

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Picture no. 1 - Hotel chains that operate in Serbia

Source: Idea and realization by the author.

The dominance of the U.S. hotel companies that also hold the primacy
in all available comparative lists is obvious. However, they had a variety of
impacts on the local hotel industry. Thus, the InterContinental Belgrade was
the first to introduce the highest standards, procedures and international
standards. Hyatt, on the other hand, trained a large number of quality
personnel through their loyalty programs directed primarily toward hoteliers
(Svorcan 2011). The incorporation of minimum standards by Best Western
hoteliers domicile enabled expansion of supply and acceptance of certain
other business combinations. Their experiences point to the necessity of
application of strategic management standardization.

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The actual implementation depends directly on the degree of adoption,

implementation, and operational standards in practice. In the case of the
Serbian hotel industry, the following dimensions are considered:
• in terms of quality of hotel product as established,
• from the aspect of the employees in terms of their respect of the
work procedures,
• in terms of customer satisfaction as well as alignment and its
application.

Aspect of the Hotel Product

Creative industries that owe their expansion to the development
information and communication technologies are primarily focused on the
end user. Consequently, their value depends on the degree of decoding skills
and perceptions of the end-users and, therefore, may or may not be
transformed into various financial profits (Hartley 2007:11). The practice,
implementation, modification and necessary degree of customization
(products, services, processes, sub-processes, forms of organization) through
the norms, standards, quality and excellence inevitably leads to new business
strategies. They are aimed at hotel guests and integrate concepts of products
and services in new ways. One of them may be defined as a concept product.
Although the concept of hotel product is identified with the physical
product, it is necessary to make a certain level of distinction to highlight the
intangible elements that determine it. The hotel complex is a unique product
of tangible and intangible elements for the realization of which an
unavoidable presence of guests is required. As such, it entails necessary
innovations, improvements and higher business standards via (adapted from:
Svorcan 2011:37):
• flexibility to the user, which is caused by his presence;
• individuality of service;
• twofold character of labor;
• simultaneity of production and consumption;
• immaterial hotel services;
• heterogeneity of organizational forms and practices in the delivery
of services;
• not being able to determine the unique and unalterable form by
which to measure quality;
• the intricate passing of as many tangible and intangible elements;
• inability to storage or resale;
• having such uniformity even in the use of parameters in the field of
legal norms;
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• indirect presentation through the simultaneous creation and

consumption of the product;
• unification and interdependence theory and practice of service
processes;
• extremely inelastic hotel offer.
The above characteristics and features of the product or the extent of
their participation and specialization demonstrate the level of development of
the hotel industry of a specific market. Components themselves can be
represented as a single cycle of causal relationships aimed at satisfying the
needs and demands of hotel guests. International hotel chains and groups are
particularly crystallized standard packages of hotel products and thus provide
global market dominance.
Normalization, standardization and harmonization of both quantitative
and qualitative indicators that enable objective evaluation of service
activities are just a prerequisite for the realization of the hotel product. This
has a special dimension when we monitor and analyze the changes in desires
and demands of hotel guests. It is an indisputable fact that the future
development of the hotel industry is moving towards further specialization
and standardization of the hotel offer.
The identity of the hotel product artificially produced and presented to
the public is referred to as image. From the aspect of corporate brand image
is a constant struggle to build lasting loyalty of end users. Elements of the
image are displayed as standardized identifiers (for a more detailed
distinction of identity and image, see: Eastman 2004:31). They also represent
the most demanding elements of the marketing mix. These elements
represent the hotel product identity. It is a unique selling proposition which
differentiates the hotel from its competition. When specifying the concept of
hotel product image is a key component of convergence of products and
services. For it can bind and residual material, the material terms and
conditions of the character, location, price, style and manner of service,
relationships and behavior of the staff, the environment and the unique
experience that is based on customer experience. This is why the hotel
product is incorporated in the tourism product as complex numerous, diverse,
mutually conditioned and related services. The main determinants are related
to space or location and attributes of attractiveness. Thus, the spatial factor is
one of the main criteria of hotel products typology and represents the
material basis of the tourism product (Bakić 2010:121). In this way, hotel
manifests itself as a product of an important component of the tourism
product that significantly affects his physiognomy, structure, or quality, or
the complete profile. The common denominator is the spatial and temporal

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occurrence of unification and implementation services. However, looking at

the hotel product through the prism of the tourism product still comes down
to a representative of accommodation as the primary determinant of
implementation of these concepts. In this way, the standardized services as
part of the product appear as a crucial determinant of the entire hotel
industry. Clarifying the conceptual definitions and their preconditions are
clarifications of the entire business as a unique mix of products and service
concepts, which has a number of characteristics, peculiarities and features.
Aspect of the hotel product is a separate entity. It is like a corporate brand
divisible only for measurable economic parameters, but in the minds of end-
users it is a single unit, a personal experience.

Aspect of the Hotel Staff

Hotel practice has proven that the person who sells a standardized
service remains a determinant in the minds of guests. This contributes to
priority changing. When we consider the concept of the product the buyers
are essential, and if we consider the concept of service the employees are the
most important (Svorcan 2011). The synergy of these two models allows the
growing emergence of these concepts as well as the higher level of business
organization. The direction and intensity of these changes can be traced
through the consolidation of the hotel industry, or through the creation of a
unique hotel product. Hoteliers are trying to achieve standardization process
by creating multiple effects aimed at optimizing business processes in the
implementation of hotel product.
When we determine the possibilities of the application of standards it is
necessary to take into account the high degree of dispersion of business hotel
accommodation. The scope of work of employees is very large and covers all
areas. On one side, the employees are in direct contact with the devices and
equipment subject to constant technological advances, on the other hand the
service users, whose needs, demands and expectations also subject to
change. All this affects the hotel organization and staff. It also has a decisive
influence on the selection and establishment of standards, policies and
operation procedures. It is a well known fact that the employees moved from
the category of human resource to the human capital of the company (source:
Dimitrovski 2010). In such a constellation, their undocumented years of
experience and skills, basic knowledge acquired during training are seen as
the basis for the creation of intellectual capital. This capital serves as the
basis for generating new value through knowledge management. Some
corporate brand hotel chains have gone further in developing and
implementing knowledge management through the hotel standards. The

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attempt to standardize the management of knowledge manifests itself

continuously through the superstructure of (adapted from: Cerović Galičić,
Ivanovic 2005:335):
• Policies strict behavior as prescribed by hotel management;
• Standard Operating Procedures, which represent established ways
of doing business in a certain way.
It is this category of strategic management that is the most important in
the hotel industry because it allows the internal, interdepartmental
standardization (for more details see: Šandro, Sinčić 2009:124). It is the one
that contributes to corporate brand achieves qualitative step forward in the
competition. In this sense, we observe the standards related to hotel staff as
instruments of the menagment of knowledge and management of capital.
Multiple studies and analysis of case studies show that the hotel's standards
and norms simplify work processes and increase the speed and productivity
in the provision and delivery of services. In this way we achieve
competitiveness and profitability of the whole enterprise market. The
implementation phases are (Holjevac 1998:63-76):
• prescribing standards,
• education, training and education of all employees,
• implementation of standards in practice,
• continuous control compliance with established standards and
elimination of failures,
• improvement of standards with additional retraining employees.
Guests’ appeals and complaints are unique. Despite the
professionalism and effectiveness of employee dissatisfaction is inevitable
and given. The unknown variable is the cause and the consequence of the
technical, service, personal and unexpected observations. Specified
classification performance to their solutions and directing attention to
possible errors and conflicts. Therefore, it is necessary to apply a
methodology while resolving complaints by applying standards of behavior
and action, but through specified procedures and rules.
In addition to these roles, the standards of a hotel should allow
successful functioning in the intensive-work activities where personnel
changes are common and frequent. This prevents the disruption of processes
and subprocesses due to recognized practitioners and experts.

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Aspect of the Hotel Guests

Basic determinants of modern hotel business are reflected in the
assumptions of a successful business through both satisfaction and, if
possible, overcoming the expectations of guests. The necessity of
recognizing their habits and requirements and timely response combines
business models through Relationship Marketing and Customer Relationship
Management. Only a holistic approach to the relationship between the
supplier and the recipient of hotel services can guarantee the carrying value
of new quality and profit. System planning, organizing, developing and
maintaining long-term mutually beneficial relationship can be obtained
through effective communication. It is necessary to emphasize that hoteliers
independently design standards that facilitate communication between the
guests and the staff (Cerović Galičić, Ivanovic, 2005:336.).
Their synchronization inevitably leads to the achievement of planned
quality. On the other hand, meeting the expectations of guests enables the
overcoming of Excellence hotel accommodations. It contributes to the
establishment of higher prices of hotel services and insures profits. Practice
has proven that the guest is always willing to pay a higher price in order to
assure quality. That is why the most important part of successful hotel
services is complete dedication (Hayes, Ninemeier, 2005:35). Modern guest
prospers every day and in every way more. He is educated, informed,
technologically sophisticated and demanding.
Some authors explain the requirements of this monster guests. It is
partly reflected in the concept of the modern customer demands (adapted
from: Galičić, Ivanovic, 2008:48):
• Claim – requires a lack of tension and trouble, peace, rest, and
security (physical, fire pervention, health, sanitation, hygiene);
• Character – by trying to stay in a healthy environment, which has
its own character features, characteristics and understanding of its
needs;
• Charm – by insisting on experience that will exceed their
expectations, especially in the relations between prices paid and
obtained values;
• Courtesy – to be treated as a king. This aspect requires the
absolute and unequivocal focus, kindness, courtesy, service,
politeness and attention;
• Cuisine – is a very nice and detailed in the selection of good
restaurants, especially in the attractiveness, diversity, and richness
to the globality.

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Superstructure above is reflected in the creation of long-term

cooperation and retention through programs. Adequate hotel service, met
expectations, the values and benefits that exceed the invested funds, as well
as contribute to a unique experience that guests choose the same hotel again,
which significantly contribute to the sustainable business of the hotel
company. One form of standardizing customer satisfaction is a loyalty
program. Frequent hotel user model is essentially a marketing strategy
because it allows you to establish solid links (Svorcan 2011). Ability to
identify, retain and stimulate loyal guests also subject to standardization,
unification and typification. Therefore, the Loyalty Programs are mega
binding and retention of in-house guests that unites a number of integrated
sub-processes and activities in the form of incentives.
In addition, the hotel industry marketing management encounters
another parameter, which is exclusively for hotel product. Kotler calls it
social or moral quality. Is referred to as a measure of trust that users have for
certain types of hotel products. Mostly based on impressions, expectations
and descriptive attributes - positive or less positive (Svorcan 2000:46).
Ethical essence of hotel quality, regardless of its relativity, implies that each
standardized service, and a measure of value that the guest is provided with,
must contain an essential element of hospitality morality. Even though, this
moral element changes from the place to the place and from epoch to epoch,
it exists in the hotel industry like an axiom.

Conclusion
For many years the prevailing opinion in Serbia was that the
implementation of strategy of standardization in the hospitality industry
stifles creativity, skill, well trained employees and produces organizational
and staffing limitations. However, the market value of hotel products of hotel
industry leaders in the region proved the necessity of standardization as
permanent process. Today, standardization of hotel product is a unique
process that has an enormous effect on operations aimed at achieving and
overcoming the design quality.
The application of strategic management standardization greatly
increases the intellectual capital of the hotel, and facilitates communication
is directed towards satisfying requires, desires and expectations of guests on
one hand and the development of new products tailored to the growing needs
of higher global markets, on the other hand. Numerous market tests prove
that the actual level of the hotel's unreserved support expressed through the
product of satisfaction, quality, price, excellence and the experience is
always in direct proportion to the profit (for more details see: Hellstrand

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2010). Application of strategic management standardization reported that

quality corporate brand represents the degree of excellence at an acceptable
price for eligible expenses. On the other hand, each customer has his/her own
evaluation of the obtained values, which is correlated with money, time and
energy costs in relation to the offer. Meeting of these interests contributes to
creating experiences and satisfaction or overall quality.
The relationship between the expected and actual scale range from
dissatisfaction to extraordinary expectations. However, achieving or
overcoming expectations does not imply success. It is necessary to achieve
unconditional support and loyalty of hotel brands. This is achieved by
combining several strategies based on building strong relationships of all
participants in the value chain.
References
Adolphi, H., (1997): Strategische Konzepte zur Organisation der betrieblichen
Standardisierung, DIN-Normungskunde Band 38, Beuth Verlag, Berlin.
Bakić, O., (2010): Marketing u turizmu, Univerzitet Singidunum, Beograd.
Balmer, M.T.J., Gray, R.E., (2003): Corporate brands, EJM/37, Emerald EarlyCite.
Bedbury, С., (2002): А New Brand World, Viking Pengiun, New York.
Cerović, Z., (2003): Hotelski menadžment, FTHM, Opatija.
Cerović, Z., Galičić, V., Ivanović, S., (2005): Menadžment hotelskog domaćinstva,
FTHM, Opatija.
Dimitrovski, R., (2010): Menadžment znanja kao poslovna strategija, Škola biznisa,
br. 2/2010, VPŠ, Novi Sad.
Đuričin, D.N., Janošević, S.V., Kaličanin, Đ.M., (2010): Menadžment i strategija,
CID, Beograd.
Galičić, V., Ivanović, S., (2008): Menadžment zadovoljstva gosta, FHTM, Opatija.
Greuning, H.V., (2006): Međunarodni standardi finansijskog izveštavanja, MATE,
Beograd.
Hart, S., Marfy, J., (2003): Robna marka, CLIO, Beograd.
Hartley, J., (2007): Kreativne industrije, CLIO, Beograd.
Hayes, D.K., Ninemeier, J.D., (2005): Upravljanje hotelskim poslovanjem, M plus,
Zagreb.
Hellstrand, P., (2010): Price Impact on Guest Satisfaction, SQInsight Hospitality
Consulting, H.Q.C., Sherman Oaks.
Holjevac, I.A., (1998): Kontroling, FHTM, Opatija.
Ind, N., (1996): Korporacijski imidž, CLIO, Beograd.
Istman,T.S., Ferguson, D.A., Klein, R., (2004): Promocija i marketing elektronskih
medija, CLIO, Beograd.
Kotler, F., Ferč, V, (2006): B2B Brend menadžment, Asee, Novi Sad.
Kotler, P., Keller, K.L., (2006): Marketing Management, Data Status, Beograd.
Salerno, N., (2005): Independent Hotels start thinking like the chains, Article 20
July 2005, Hotelmarketing.com.

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Svorcan, M., (2000): Gostoprimstvo, ABC Glas, Beograd.

Svorcan, M., Svorcan, N., (2010): Holistički okvir brendiranja u hotelskoj
industriji, Hotel link 13-14, VHŠ, Beograd.
Svorcan, M., Svorcan, N., (2010): Imidž u stratеgiјi hоtеlskе markе, Hotel link br.
15-16, VHŠ, Beograd.
Svorcan, N., Stojanović, S., Smiljanić, I., Sedlarević, J., (2011): Uloga i značaj cene
u strategiji pozicioniranja hotelskog smeštaja, VIII Forum menadžera hotela i
hotelskih domaćinstava, Časopis Turistički svet, januar – februar 2012,
Gastro print, Beograd.
Svorcan, N., (2008): Globalni lanci hotelske industrije, VHŠ, Beograd.
Svorcan, N., (2009): Međunarodni hotelski lanci, VHŠ, Beograd.
Svorcan, N., (2011): Programi lojalnosti – strategijsko opredeljenje ka poslovnoj
izvrsnosti, Hotelska kuća, Zlatibor.
Svorcan, N., (2011): Strategija hotelske marke, VHŠ, Beograd.
Šandro, Đ., Sinčić, M., (2009): Suvremeno hotelsko domaćinstvo, HoReBa, Pula.
Van Gelder, C., (2003): Global Brand Strategy, Kogan Page, London.
Vlada Republike Srbije, (2008): Nacionalna strategija održivog razvoja, Beograd.

NOTES ON THE AUTHOR

Dr. NOVAK M. SVORCAN (The College of Hotel Management Belgrade
[email protected]) works as a professor at The College of Hotel Management
in Belgrade. He obtained his Doctor’s degree at Singidunum University in Belgrade
in 2011. His scientific fields of interest are: hotel management, economy, hotel
chains, brands, management of quality in the hotel industry. He is the author and
coauthor of numerous scientific papers and textbooks. He participated in many
national and international conferences.

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CONSIDERATIONS ON THE STUDY OF CONSUMPTION

AND CONSUMERS’ BEHAVIOUR
Ecaterina Putz

Abstract: This paper presents some considerations for identifying and

quantifying the factors that trigger consumer behaviour for goods and
services (according to motivational research, along with needs, there is a
number of other internal variables that influence the manifestation of a
certain type of consumer behaviour). Based on these main objectives, the
study highlights the appropriate application forms and research methods.
Key words: need, request, consumption, consumer behaviour, motivational
research

Human society today has as general economic aspects the following

phenomena: the growth and diversification of goods and services, the
distribution of demand (in space and time), population growth, increased
urbanization process etc. New trends in lifestyle have also emerged:
increasing quality demands, the persistence of a “wave of health”, making
impulse purchases, fast changing of fashion trends etc.
On these general trends, businesses must substantiate an efficient
economic activity, to apply marketing principles that have as main reference
framework, the market. For effective use of marketing action it is required to
merge all its elements: mix marketing mix, also known as “the 4 P”: product,
place, promotion, price. These 4 elements (product, distribution, promotion
and price) summarize all the factors by which any economic agent operates
on the market and achieves their strategic objectives. The market completes
and finalizes the economic activity, checks whether the goods and services
accomplish to satisfy the clients’ needs, in the social shape of “product
demand”. Therefore, a complex analysis of the market is required, the
knowledge, assessment and inclusion of all the facts and factors of its
revelators, plus an analysis of the situation and position on the market of
each economic agent (in relation to its objective and resources).
The main characteristics of a market are represented in image 1.

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Image 1. Main characteristics of a market

The market represents, however, only a “zone” in the circuit that helps
accomplish needs so that consumption can appear.

Consumption sphere Market sphere

Need Demand

Consumption Purchase

The field of marketing investigations and research does not include

only the market sphere; it refers to the sources of demand, by penetrating the
vast domain of needs, and to the tracking of the way “products” behave
towards their users and final consumers.
The whole of human needs refers to satisfying material demands and
work force (connected to the social production), and also to satisfy material
and spiritual needs for each individual. Marketing aims to tackle the human
needs that can be virtually or potentially satisfied with the help of economic
activity’s results. Enlarging the field of investigation (in the sphere of human
needs and aspirations) without a direct economic correspondent is
unjustifiable in terms of practical economic efficiency.
Consumption needs (as a consequence of society’s historical evolution)
reflects the combination of the terms of social existence with individual way
of understanding own needs. One should bear in mind that «nevoia
reprezintă rodul unei cheltuieli de „energie mintală” sau rezultanta unui

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sistem de „valori etice”, ce corespund unor stări, opinii sau unui anumit tip
de experienţă a oamenilor»1 (trans. <<need is the result of an expenditure of
“mental energy” or the result of “ethical values”, which correspond to certain
states, opinions or experience of people>>).
Needs are characterized by dynamism, always a step ahead society’s
capacity of satisfying them (there is no coincidence in the occurrence of a
need and its manifestation as a market demand); they stay for a while in the
sphere of aspirations.
Consumption is just a part of needs, i.e. “solvent needs”. The gap
between them is kept permanently, this being an actual engine of progress.
Consequently, demand expresses the needs only to the extent of a real
possibility to satisfy them. On the one hand, a certain offer of “products” is
assumed (thus on object for demand), on the other hand there is an adequate
purchasing power (a solvency demand). Demand connects the needs of
people and actual consumption; it proceeds (naturally) the moment of
consumption, representing a potential consumption. Therefore, there is a
relationship as follows:

Need ≥ Demand ≥ Consumption

Quantitative offer Cash Quality-structural offer

Offer is the main element of economic growth and raises issues

regarding the means used to achieve the mass of products necessary for the
society and the possibilities of transforming these products into means of
satisfying consumption needs.
Fundamentally, a product is everything a seller provides the buyer in
exchange. The product is defined as „“a set of tangible and intangible
attributes that a seller offers to potential client and his needs or desires” 2.

1
Anzien, E-Psychologie du consommateur, Paris, Ed. Technique Commerciale, 1973.
2
Lush, R.F. și Lush, V.N. – Principles of Marketing, Kent Publishing Co, 1987.

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“Product” stands for a physical good or a service; most times there is a

connection between the two. A good has a physical form and can be seen or
touched (it is tangible and one paid for the buyer becomes its owner). A
service is an activity for the benefit of the buyer (is intangible - a buyer
cannot inspect or test the service before purchase).
Between demand (or consumption) of goods and services there are
tight interdependence relationships. In many cases the goods and services are
aiming, on the one hand, the same needs and, on the other hand, the same
sources of income; so, between the two forms of demand substitution
relationships exist, broadening one takes place at the expense of the other.
For example: people can call on public laundries or cleaners and give up on
buying washing machines; the demand for public transport services can
move towards demand for own cars, and along with it the demand for petrol,
lubricants, spare parts etc. (the ration between the price of goods and services
prices is an important factor that determines the extent and direction of these
movements).
In light of these realities one of the directions that must be addressed is
the study of the consumer: what he represents, what are the real and first
needs and, what are the elements that can make his consumer behaviour
predictable, how can it be influenced from the exterior to behave favourably
towards products from the offer (goods and services) etc. Consumer research
raises a few questions that need answers.
Consumers must be characterized in a complex way, when and where
they usually buy, how they use the product, why they buy it, what do they
think about its quality and utility. Therefore, it is an imperative to know the
system of consumption and the factors that can influence a consumer’s
decision to buy (the influence of the factors “can” and “want”), image no. 2.

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Income Spendings

Credit

Savings
Apportionmen
Spending t of costs
power

Time
power Relation expenses
incurred by families

Personal
self

Ways and
Motivational Attitudes Willingness
complex disposition to spend places to buy

Purchases’
Social self distribution

Socio – cultural pressures

Society

Commercial pressures
Technical
and advertising
proposal

Image 2. System and factors affecting consumer buying decision

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It is noted that in the structure of consumption the key factors are:

income, credit, time power (play an important role in the distribution of
costs); fundamental needs, personal self (natural tendencies, deeply known
and stable) and social self (tendencies acquired relatively superficial and
unstable); socio – cultural pressures (the individual receives from society in
general and from his social group, in particular, information, education
exercising some of the different pressures), technical proposal (new products
that go towards advertising the commercial pressures and consumer
perception), consumers’ disposition of attitudes etc.
The truth is that consumers do not perceive all the influences and
pressures they are subjected to. Thus, according to contemporary psychology
thesis, that human personality is a “self-regulating system” and researchers
tried to identify, besides needs, other internal variables that trigger consumer
behavior. This is why motivational research appeared (M.R.), their initiation
being linked to the name of E. Dichter.3
In a motivational complex rational-type reasons coexist (confidence,
economy, durability and ease of use of the product, price, aesthetics,
existence of spare parts, punctuality in delivery etc.), next to those affective/
emotional-type (social status, prestige, pride, health, conformism, laziness,
ambition, self-approval, artistic refinement, passions, vices, love of children,
the family, the opposite sex etc.).
In any consumer behaviour we can identify both types of motivation,
their share is not the same, but the role of trigger buying decision (or
rejection) can be played by each. With this approach the nature of consumer
motivation, the old saying „spune-mi cât câştigi şi eu îţi voi spune cum vei
cheltui” (trans. “tell me your earnings and I will tell you your spending”),
which was based on the argument that their distribution costs is only based
on income, must be replaced with one that better reflects reality: „spune-mi
ce eşti şi eu îţi voi spune ce cheltuieli vei face” (trans. “tell me what you are
and I will tell you what you spend”). 4
Consumer motivation is determined mostly by factors specific for
social groups ideation and behaviour, such as: opinions, prejudices, beliefs,
customs and traditions, socio-cultural patterns of behavior, attitudes
innovative or conservative, etc. It should be noted that for each element there

3
Dichter, E., La stratégie du dѐsire, Paris, Fayard, 1961.
4
Pitroiu A., Matalon, B., L’analyse de la consommation, in „L'economique et les sciences
humaines”, Paris, Dunod, 1967.

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is a combination, in a manner difficult to describe, of very different

variations depending on their area, on their geographical range and on their
scope in time (political, rational, affective, ethical etc.).
Based on these considerations, the study of demand for goods and
services has as the main objective to: identify and quantify factors that
contribute to the formation and manifestation of demand, intensity and
specificity their action; characterize different segments of buyers and
consumers: capturing the so-called “local colour” of consumer behaviour;
determine the overall volume of demand and consumption; aspects of marketing
activity (distribution channels, forms of sales prices, promotional means used,
etc.). To this end, the study of demand must include two approaches (which are
mutually interrelated): indirect research is useful (it is based on “office”
information sources offered by dynamic series of statistical records, accounting
and operational), supplemented with direct methods of studying the
application and turn it in purchase and consumption (they allow obtaining “in
the field” information through psycho-sociological surveys, polls, tests answers,
experiments, exhibitions etc.).
In order to choose the most appropriate forms and methods of research
(taking into account the multitude of phenomena to be studied), several
principles are enforced: research should be performed in all groups of goods
and services each raises a different issue); studies should be carried out
continuously, due to the great mobility of consumer behaviour; research
results should be known and used with great efficiency, since there is
always the risk of depreciation or aging.

References
Cătoiu. I., Teodorescu N., Comportamentul consumatorului; Teorie şi practică.
Ediţia Economics, 1997.
Foltean, F., Lădar, L., Marketingul, Ed. Brumar, Timişoara 2001.
Mihuţ I., Popa M., Consumatorul. Managementul ofertei, Ed. Dacia, 1996.
Whiting P. W., Les cinq grandes règles de la vente, Paris, Dunod, 1966.
NOTES ON THE AUTHOR
ECATERINA PUTZ, professor PhD. in Economics at the University of the
West, Tmisoara, postgraduate trainings in the country. She teaches undergraduate
and postgraduate courses in business economics, management-marketing and
management of logistics chain. Her prior research domains are: distribution
management, transport logistics systems.

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THE WICS MODEL OF LEADERSHIP: THEORY AND

APPLICATION IN HOTEL MANAGEMENT

Aleksandar Kontić

Abstract: The broadened and diversifying global market at great pace led to
the increasing demand for hospitality business and in particular for hotel
industry and hotel managements; globalization changes their business
environment into fierce battlefield. In order to “win the war” hotel firms
need to acquire effective leadership, probably more the ever in their long
history. Since nineteenth century, a dozen of leadership theories and models
had been proposed, and none of them was able to totally capture all of the
many facts—both internal and external to the individual—that make for a
successful leader.
Relatively recently, Steinberg’s WICS model drew much attention; it offered
a fresh view on old problems, being designed to provide the integrative
approach based upon the notion that a successful leader needs the critical
ability to synthesize wisdom, intelligence, and creativity. If any of the traits
mentioned would be lacking, according to this model, the leader will fall into
the category of those who failed in his mission.
The paper discusses the theoretical and empirical ameliorations provided by
Steinberg’s model, its ambiguities, as well as practical applications for hotel
management.
Keywords: Hotel management, leadership, Steinberg, WICS, critics

Introduction
It is an inevitable fact that the times of crisis as a rule produces the
revival of urgent needs for competent leadership; thus starts the search for
individuals who would, employing their personal advantages for the benefit
of followers, make the decisive effort to undo the harm of economical or
political dangers. For centuries, the most question remains: what are those
advantages that so sharply differentiate successful leaders from the
followers, or from those who tried to lead, but utterly failed to accomplish
the task they undertook? If we could understand the nature of successful
leadership, then we would eventually be able to nurture them form their early
ages, or, we could with more confidence make the appropriate choice
between prospective leaders.
The problem appeared in the face of very ambiguity of the notion of
successive leader the experience had proved that the same people may be
successful leaders in certain period of time, just to fail when the

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circumstances, or environment in general, had changed. From the other

side,a dozen of leadership theories did not meet the standard of rigorous
empric evaluation, and non of them have become an comprehenisve theory.
Robert Sternberg. psychologist and psychometrician, known for his work in
the fields of human intelligence, creativity, thinking styles and leadership,
have proposed the relatuvely novel model of succesful leadership, known as
„WICS model“. WICS is an acronym for "wisdom, intelligence, creativity
synthesized." The basic and entirely new idea incorporated in this model is
model is that leadership is not something individual is born with and is not
inherited. According to Sternberg, leadership is a matter of presonal
decission; whether the decission was correct, and leadership would be
succesful, depneds on a combination, or synthesis, of wisdom, intelligence
and creativity.

Creativity
The issue of human creativity was always one of the most attractive
puzzles since the beginning of human civilization; it is only in last century that
creativity was treated as a privilege of minority. Sternberg’s concept of
creativity was indeed challenging: he proposed that it is a sum of skills and
attitudes which could be used to generate extraordinary ideas and products.
Those ideas are relatively novel, high in quality, and appropriate to the task at
hand. Sternberg maintains that it is obvious fact that leaders may influence their
followers, but with the ideas that may completely lack creativity or other two
above mentioned attributes of successful leader. The question that may arise
here is the well known question of nature of human creativity: nurture versus
nature-in other words, is creativity of constitutional origin, or may be trained as
all other human potentials? For Sternberg, creative people have many particular
personality traits, that are not innate, but they rest on the conscious decisions.
(Sternberg, 2000). In this way, Sternberg revives the old sentence Thomas
Edison expressed, maintaining that creativity “consists of 99% of perspiration
and only 1% of inspiration”. In this way, he argues that creative personality rest
on decision to be creative, and on positive attitudes towards creativity. Those
positive attitudes, according to Sternberg, are composed of six distinctive traits:
problem redefining, problem analysis, selling a solutions, recognition of value of
knowledge, willingness to take sensible risks, and willingness to surmount
obstacles.
There are some issues in which proposed model is not supported with
detailed analysis: Sternberg states that creative leader should posses the
ability to redefine problem, instead of rigidly pushing towards the shared
problem definition. In this way, rigidity is character trait that stands against

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the free and fluent attitudes towards redefining the problem. At the same
time, he argues that gifted leaders are more willing to analyze their own
strengths and weaknesses, while analyzing the problem. This means he
should posses the one important trait that he failed to notice: his personality
maturation would enable him to have balanced, healthy and mature
narcissism. The same stands when we consider the attitude towards taking
sensible risks. In the narcissistic culture, many individuals do not accept the
risk to fail-for it may impact their narcissistic equilibrium.

Intelligence
Concerning his concept of intelligence and leadership, Williams and
Sternberg post question how important is the high intelligence? They state
that, if leader posses much higher intelligence than followers, he may be not
able to connect to them, and become ineffective. Williams & Sternberg,
1988). According to this model, intelligence does not have close connection
to old, well known models of Bine (Binet, 1905), Spearman, etc. Sternberg
points on “successful intelligence”, which is…” in part, the skill and
disposition needed to successful life…given one’s own conception of
success, within one’s sociocultural environment. ( Sternberg, 1997). They
also make distinction between academic and practical intelligence. The first
one refers to memory and analytical thinking and depositions that together
constitute the conventional notion of intelligence. Academic intelligence is
of importance for leadership for it enables retrieval of information, as well as
their analyzing, evaluation and judgment.
The second one, practical intelligence, is defined as a composite of
skills and dispositions aimed for solving everyday problems. Concerning the
leadership, a leader who posses high academic intelligence, but lacks
practical one, may have excellent memory skills and may possess enormous
amount of information, yet will not be able to use it for practical purposes.

Wisdom
According to Sternberg, the concept of composite model needed for
successful leadership should posses the third element: wisdom. This
additional quality is, according to the author, most important quality, but the
rarest. Wisdom is….” At work, when individual use successful intelligence,
creativity and knowledge as moderated by values to (a) seek to reach a
common good, (b) by balancing intrapersonal (his own),
intrapersonal(others) and extrapersonal (organizational) interests (c) over the
short and long term to (d) adapt to, shape and select environments”
Sternberg, 1998, 2003).

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Measures Intelligence Creativity Wisdom

ART
intelligence 1.00 0.55 0.78
creativity 1.00 0.48
BUSSINESS
intelligence 1.00 0.29 0.51
creativity 1.00 -0.24
PHILOSOPHY
intelligence 1.00 0.56 0.42
creativity
PHYSICS
intelligence 1.00 0.64 0.68
creativity
LAYPERSONS
intelligence 1.00 0.33 0.75
creativity 1.00 0.27
Adapted from Sternberg, 2003. p 181

Sternberg’s conception of wisdom, it seems, is not generated from any

contemporary personality theory; if we consider the relatively novel
psychodynamic conceptions of personality, wisdom, intelligence and
creativity are highly inter-correlated. Wisdom is viewed as the outcome of
development of healthy narcissism; archaic forms of narcissism, however,
are predominant, and only the minority of population may reach the level of
wisdom. According to Kohut, and his followers, development of narcissism
may be blocked at certain developmental stage, when the urge to satisfy
archaic (infantile) narcissistic needs, individual cannot develop its creative
potentials, may not apply intellectual abilities, and consequently, cannot
attain wisdom. (Kohut, 1978-1991) Leaders with archaic narcissistic needs
are not able to take risks, for the possibility to fail produces enormous
internal tension in them. To loose, means that- often exaggerated (grandiose,
omnipotent)- image on oneself would crumble. Therefore, they avoid taking
any risks. In another words, applying creative potentials is possible only if
the prospect of success is unquestionable. Another outcome of high levels of
narcissistic vulnerability causes the severe lack of practical intelligence;
when avoiding facing difficult problem in effort to solve it, they abstain to
learn on their own mistakes.
Finally, the imperative to present themselves authentically as ones who
will seek to reach a common good means to put the interest of others before
his own. This is not an easy task for personality with strong archaic
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narcissistic needs: he is to search for fulfillment of self, and not having

firmly established attitudes for concern for others. From the other side, the
sense of his existence is amorphous, without contemplation for any effort
that will benefit the future. More or less, for him, life is “here and now”. “To
live for the moment is the prevailing passion -- to live for yourself, not for
your predecessors or posterity” 9. (Lash, 1979)

WICS and other theories of leadership

Although situational theories of leadership did get support from
research, but Sternberg’s model gives a fresh view on old problem. He states
that situation variable is included in the model: what may be considered in
one culture may not be treated in a similar way by another. From the other
side, people may be creative to the extent which is allowed by environment.
According to the contingency models of leadership, the interaction between
leader’s traits and the situation will determine leader’s success. There are
empirical data that points on the fact that, when leader’s cognitive skills are
significantly higher comparing to those of followers, his higher cognitive
skills would hamper his effectiveness-just as WICS theory predicts.
Comparing to contingency-based leadership theories, WISC model is
congruent in a way that it states that the optimality of actions depends on the
situation in which leader has to operate. Again, the decision that is intelligent
in one situation is not necessarily intelligent in another
Sternberg argues that… ”Moreover, creativity is largely situational
determined. A course of action that was creative some years ago (e.g., an
advance forward incrementation) might be at a later time only mildly
creative (e.g., a small for-ward incrementation). Similarly, a wise course of
action depends on who the stakeholders are, what their needs are, the
environmental constraints under which they are operating, the state of the
organization at the time, and so on.” (Sternberg, 2003, p. 109)
The influential model of transformational leadership, developed by
Burns and followers (Burns (1978, Bass, 1985, 1998, 2002; Bass & Avolio,
1994, 1995; Bass, Avolio & Atwater, 1996; Sashkin, 2004), postulates two
essential ways of leadership, transactional and transformational: according to
WICS model, transactional leaders are primarily concerned with the adaptive

9
For extensive elaboration of this topic, see Lash, C.(1979) The Culture of Narcissism:
American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations W.W. Norton, New York

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function of practical intelligence, aiming to modify their behavior to adapt to

the environment. From the other side, transformational leaders emphasize the
shaping function of practical intelligence, by modifying the environment to
suit their leadership goals.

Conclusion
Sternberg’s WICS model tries to synthesize previous models of
leadership, offering the composite of traits that, according to the author, in a
way incorporate old models. However, it seems that at the same time it
incorporate their failures as well. The empirical studies gave the correlations,
presented in Table 1. (For example, negative correlation between creativity
and wisdom.) That may raise the question of terminological imprecision and
overlapping. It also seems to present a step back to the old theory of traits,
which does not necessarily need to be misleading. Particularly problem is the
conception of wisdom, for it seems to be burdened with many valued-
oriented connotations.
It is probably extremely difficult to design the model of leadership that
will cover all the facts —both internal and external to the individual—that
are decisive for leader to be successful. The WICS model is based upon the
notion that a successful leader decides to synthesize wisdom, intelligence,
and creativity. Creative skills and dispositions are needed to form ideas,
academic skills and dispositions to evaluate them as good or bad, practical
skills and dispositions to make the ideas work and convince others of the
value of them: wisdom-based skills and dispositions to are needed to
promote that the ideas are in the service of the common good rather than just
the good of the leader or small group of followers. A leader with less
creative ideas cannot cope successfully with novel and difficult situations; a
leader who does not possess intelligence will lack correct decisions whether
his or her ideas are viable. Finally, leader with under-developed practical
intelligence is unable to implement his or her ideas effectively. Wisdom
would, according to this model, provide that implementing ideas are contrary
to the best interests of the followers.

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1950-1981. P. Ornstein, ed. Four volumes. New York: International
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Lash, C.(1979) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of
Diminishing Expectations W.W. Norton, New York
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Schank, R.C. & Abelson, R.P. 1977.

Sternberg, R.J. 1985. Beyond IQ: A Triarchic theory of human intelligence. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
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NOTES ON THE AUTHOR

ALEKSANDAR KONTIĆ, (psychologist, The College of Hotel Magement,
Belgrade, [email protected]) M.A. works as a professor at The College of Hotel
Management in Belgrade. His scientific fields of interest are: psychology, hotel
management, hospitality business, leadership in hotel industry. He is the author
and coauthor of numerous scientific papers and textbooks. He participated in
many national and international conferences.

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REGIONAL AND NATIONAL SUSTAINABLE

COMPETITIVENESS
Horia Liviu Popa

Abstract: The progress of Romania and Europe, deeply threatened by global

crises, growing stronger since the beginning of the 21st century, requires a
broader systemic approach in integrated sustainable management,
governance and technologies development, in the most various domains of
the real world.
The present paper aims at strengthening progress-related research and
general systemic models of progress based on integrated strategies of
sustainable competitiveness.
A new unitary methodology for integrated sustainable competitiveness
strategies is elaborated, the original correlation vision – mission- aim –
objectives – strategic axes being applied at euro-regional level.
The paper develop the new research sub-domain called “sustainable
integrated competitiveness”, highly important for Romania and the EU in
future decades.
Key Words: systemics, progress, sustainable competitiveness, Europe, Romania

Introduction
After 1960, when globalization and its related disturbances became
more and more evident, the on-unlimited time sustainable progress of
Mankind in the Universe requires a more extended, innovative and deeper
integration of all resources, policies and management, technologies and
Nature protection, culture-related cooperation and competitiveness. The first
steps in this process have already been taken. At the beginning of the 21st
century, when the global economic crisis and the climate crisis have attained
their climax, sustainable progress requires new advanced competitive
strategies (organizational, local, regional, national, continental and global),
which are evolving in ever longer periods of time of 30 – 50 - 100 years, and
more integrated at MACRO & Mezo & micro levels.
The present article aims at studying in details the progress-related
research and general systemic models of sustainable competitiveness
strategies, oriented towards their practical application, first of all at regional
and national level. The present article makes a minute analysis of a new
research and action sub-domain called “sustainable integrated
competitiveness”, highly important for Romania and the European Union in
the years (EU 2020 Strategy) and decenniums to come.

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Sustainable progress
As a general rule the sustainable progress Ps(t,g) is defined by the
real systems SR evolution whose characteristics is the cyclic (cycles c and
generations g), on unlimited term increase of:
- integrated sustainable competitiveness Kis(t,g) (Resource availability
in the proximal external environment, Competing capability, Flexibility,
Value, Demand in the proximal external environment, Efficiency),
- of the structural-functional complexity W(t,g),
- of the diversity Z(t,g) and
- of the B(t,g) welfare of entities in the hierarchy of the system internal
and external environments in a single / more living space-time-resources
domains Dstr(t,g) (Popa, Pater, Cristea, 2008:14; Costanza, 2009: 7).
In the “planet Earth” space-time-resources domain, the evolution of
human civilization and culture in the last 50,000 years has developed into
three self-included space-time-resources sub-domains: natural Dnat(t,g),
social-human Dumn(t,g), moral – economic – political – security Deps(t,g).
These sub-domains, traversed periodically by numerous crises, can be
characterized by means of three types of integrated sustainability:
- natural sustainability Tnat(t,g), which must ensure over an unlimited
period of time normal life conditions for the biosphere and which contains
successive Tumn(t,g) and Teps(t,g)
- social-human sustainability Tumn(t,g), which must ensure over an
unlimited period of time the premises for the existence and evolution of
Mankind;
- moral, economic, politic, security (military) sustainability Teps(t,g)
which must ensure over an unlimited period of time the existence of human
society in the Universe, including other planets as well in the future.
It is obvious that natural sustainability Tnat(t,g) precedes social-human
sustainability Tumn(t,g) and this one precedes moral, economic, politic,
security (military) sustainability Teps(t,g).
In any space-time-resources domain Dstr(t,g), sustainable progress is
determined by total sustainable competitiveness Ktots (t,g), (in all
environments and for all resources, on unlimited time) and relies on cyclic
multiple clustering, as consequence of optimum / sub-optimum, qualitative
and quantitative development of systems of systems {SS}, present in
periodical stability, self-regulated by natural and / or artificial factors, with
inherent periods of disturbances and crises.
The sustainable integrative competitiveness Kis(t,g) means the
ability and the capacity of a (SS) system of systems to optimise from an
integrative-hierarchy perspective its internal environment, to be a winner in

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the coopetition (cooperation and / or coopetition in successive-parallel cycles

and generations) of its external environment, without causing damage, to
simultaneously achieve welfare, for a unlimited („sustainable”) period of
time within Dstr(t,g) living domains .
The sustainable competitiveness (on unlimited term) of a country
federation, of a country or region is not any more determined by individual
organizations / companies but by clusters, by integrative total innovation (in
the domain of resources, technologies, management and policies, culture of
competitiveness) in inoclusters, industries, economic sectors, public
administration and communities. As in the Universe, innovative clusters
(inoclusters) produce sustainable progress and welfare in all domains. That is
the reason why, cluster-based competitiveness at local, regional, national,
federal and global level and clustering have become during the last decade
the main topics of economic and technologic policies of developed countries,
of the EU countries and of all advanced countries (Porter, 1998; Ketels,
2004; Press, 2006; Garelli, 2006; Barrio, 2010).

Methodologies for integrated sustainable competitiveness strategies

By their specificity, long- / prospective- term policies and management
are integrative and oriented towards competitiveness increase, in terms of
expansion, stagnation or crisis. The integration methods in the domain
developed after 1995 (Porter, 1998; Popa, 2002; Garelli, 2006; NGA, 2007;
OECD, 2007; Sölvell, 2008; Kotler, 2009) present a great diversity of topics,
from the company level to a national and federal approach.
The increase of sustainable total competitiveness Ktots(t,g) follows
the development and progressive integration of the two ways to improve
competitiveness at organizational, local, regional, national and federal /
continental level, as they were homologated after1980:
- macro and mezzo governmental integrated policies, oriented
towards sustainable total competitiveness (value), at regional,
national and international level, and connected to those policies
that foresee world governance,
- elaboration and constant application of new methods, structures
and programs at all levels, especially at mezzo and micro levels,
meant for increasing sustainable competitiveness of organizations,
based on strong public-private partnerships (PPPP) able to develop
sustainable competitiveness integrative management, clusters and
organization networks competitive on the global market.

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The integrated policies and management of competitiveness

process (country P, region R, county J, area Z, locality L, cluster C) takes
place continuously, having cycle (Popa, Pater, Cristea, 2008:67) of two years
for P, R, J, Z, L, C and of less than one year for network RF, firm F, business
A and function f. The policies and management process meet four periods
that can be named suggestively, as follows:
I. Where and to what extent are we competitive? (analysis of
competitiveness)
II. Where and to what extent we intend to get? (planning and
decision for competitiveness increase)
III. How can we get there? (organization and execution for
competitiveness increase)
IV. Are we competitive where we intended to get? (control and
adjustment for competitiveness increase).
The description of policies and management of integrated
competitiveness (Popa, 2008) illustrates the first and the most important
way of integration, the operational-structural (innovative clustering) one
that refers to the set of EK competitive entities. This attracts the creation and
development of new management and policy based integrated methods and
techniques (Popa, 2002).
The second way is the one of competitiveness culture and refers to
the EK most important resources: human resources (persons with their skills
and competences) and social resources (competitive team spirit).
The third way is the informatics one, which becomes more and more
complex and important at the same time with the acceleration of
globalization and the expansion of IT&C.

Correlation vision-mission-aim-objectives-axes in the integrated

sustainable competitiveness strategies
The correlation „vision – mission - aim – objectives – axes” in
sustainable competitiveness strategies integrated strategies is an extremely
complex problem. In any space-time-resources domain Dstr(t,g), sustainable
progress relies on cyclic multiple clustering, as consequence of optimum /
sub-optimum, qualitative and quantitative development of some systems of
systems {SS}
- present and maintained in periodical stability, self-regulated by
natural and / or artificial factors, with inherent periods of disturbances and
crises, and, at the same time.
- firmly oriented, in an innovative, offensive, integrative-competitive
way towards progress (Table 1), based on sustainable inoclusters.

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The principle of the correlation “vision – mission - aim – objectives –

strategic axes” in the integrated strategies of sustainable competitiveness is
presented in Figure 1 for the complex case of Banat region in Romania-
Serbia cross-border area, 2010 - 2015 (Iovescu, Popa, 2009:112).
7 Environments:
Mnat – natural environment;
Mdpl – demo-psycho-linguistic environment;
Mscu – socio-cultural environment;
Mpja – political-juridical-administrative environment;
Msec – socio-economic (business) environment;
Mino – innovation environment;
Msem – security environment.

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Level MACRO Mezo micro

(continental, national, euro- (county, zone, local, branch) (clusters, networks, firms,
regional, regional) Very great complexity businesses)
Enormous complexity (7 environments, all 7 Great complexity
K(t,g) (7 environments, all 7 categories of resources) (≥2 environments, all 7
Growth categories of resources) categories of resources)
► government economic ► government economic
macro-stability policies mezo-stability policies
• classic • classic
Governmental polic ies a nd

• modern • modern
Organizatio nal po licies

► global macro-stability ► global mezo-stability

policies (7 environments policies (7 environments
& all resources) & all resources)
► economic ► economic competitiveness ► economic
competitiveness policies policies (2 environments competitiveness
(2 environments & all & all resources) cluster- policies (2
resources) cluster-based based environments & all
► total competitiveness ► total competitiveness resources) cluster-
policies (value, in 7 policies (value, in 7 based
environments & all 7 environments & all 7 ► total competitiveness
resources) cluster-based resources) cluster-based policies (value, in 7
Combine d growth ways of the competitiveness K

environments & all 7

resources) cluster-
based
► competitiveness ► competitiveness valuation ► competitiveness
valuation methods methods valuation methods
► Competitiveness ► Competitiveness Councils ► Integrative
Councils and Centres and Centres (CK) Management of the
(CCK) ► Organizations Networks Competitiveness and
► Organizations to Competitiveness Value (IMKV)
Networks to Oriented (ONCO) • Development
Competitiveness ► Administration & • Promotion
Met hods , s truct ures , programmes

Oriented (ONKO) Employers & Unions & • Learning

► Govern & Employers ► Competitiveness Public- • Implementation
& Unions & Private Partnerships ► Competitiveness
► Romanian (PPK) Centres and
Competitiveness ► Governmental Networks (CCK) for
Partnership (PRK) Competitiveness • IMKV
► Governmental Programmes (GKP) for development
Competitiveness • Counties (J) (R&D)
Programmes (GKP) • Zone (Z) • IMKV
for • Localities (L) implementation
• Continent (C) • Mezo-Branches / • Competitiveness
• Economic Sectors (B / S) culture
Unions (EU) ∼ Industry ► Organizational
• Countries (N) ∼ Agriculture Competitiveness
• Euro-regions ∼ …. Programmes (OKP)
(ER) for
• Regions (R), • Clusters (C)
• MACRO-Branches • Firm
/ Sectors (B / S) • Networks
∼ Industry (FN)
∼ Agriculture • Firms (F)
∼ …. • Businesses (B)

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VISION 2010-2030: Banat – a dynamic, sustainable competitive and prosperous euro region

AIM 2010 – 2015: Increase of sustainable competitiveness of Banat as multi-ethnic and multi-cultural region

OBJECTIVES and STRATEGIC AXES (OAS) of BANAT 2010 - 2015

offensive
objectives
N10
R8
A2 E4 V6 Postponing of
Risk acceptance and
International Orientation and Product assimilation quality,
promotion (strong
aggressiveness of export in the global and added value environment
entrepreneurial
Banat economy economy within Banat and bio-
spirit)
diversity level

stability
objectives
A1 AS1 Cooperation AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS1
National / AS 3 Infra- 2 Competiti-veness 5 Rural development AS 5 Rural Cooperation
International structure AS 5 Rural AS 6 Tourism development Fighting
attractiveness AS 6 Tourism development AS 8 Develop-ment AS 8 Develop-ment postponing
of Banat AS 8 Develop- of human, social of human, social through AS 7
economy ment of human, resources resources Environment
social resources
E3 AS1Cooperation E3 & E4 AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1
Orientation AS 2 Competiti- Flexible 2 Competiti-veness 2 Competiti-veness Cooperation
and export in veness equilibrium through AS 5 Rural AS 8 Develop-ment Fighting
the proximity AS 5 Rural AS 2 Competiti- development of human, social postponing
economy development veness AS 8 Develop-ment resources through AS 7
AS 8 Develop- AS 9 Anti-crisis & of human, social Environment
ment of human, post-crisis pro-grams resources
social resources 2010-2013
V5 AS 2 Competiti- AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1
Richness of veness 2 Competiti-veness 2 Competiti-veness 2 Competiti-veness Cooperation
natural / AS 3 Infra- AS 5 Rural AS 5 Rural AS 5 Rural Fighting
human structure development development development postponing
resources of AS 6 Tourism AS 8 Develop-ment AS 8 Develop-ment AS 8 Develop-ment through AS 7
Banat region of human, social of human, social of human, social Environment
resources resources resources
R7 AS 4 & AS 5 AS 8 Develop-ment AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1
Social Urban & Rural of human, social 4 & AS 5 Urban & 4 & AS 5 Urban & Cooperation
cohesion for development resources Rural development Rural development Fighting
Banat AS 8 Develop- AS 8 Develop-ment AS 8 Develop-ment postponing
stability and ment of human, of human, social of human, social through AS 7
welfare social resources resources resources Environment
N9 AS 3 Infra- AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1Cooperation AS AS1
Protection of structure 2 Competiti-veness 2 Competiti-veness 2 Competiti-veness Cooperation
natural AS 4 & AS 5 AS 3 Infra-structure AS 7 Mediu AS 8 Develop-ment
environment Urban & Rural AS 8 Develop-ment of human, social AS 7
and development of human, social resources Environment
biodiversity resources
in Banat
region

Fig. 1. Vision, aim, objectives O and strategic axes AS of Banat region in Romania –
Serbia cross-border area 2010 – 2015

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The strategic vision (2010 – 2030), aim (2010 – 2015) and mission of
Banat region are part of the national strategies and policies of the two
countries and of the European Union from 2010 to 2030, are oriented
towards the dynamic progress of the cross-border area and will significantly
contribute to the sustainable progress of both Romania (RO-SNDDR 2008;
RO-SDTR, 2008) and Serbia (RS-NSDS, 2008; RS-RRSB, 2009):

Vision 2010 – 2030: Banat – a dynamic, sustainable competitive

and prosperous Euroregion
Aim 2010 – 2015: Increase of sustainable competitiveness of Banat
as multi-ethnic and multi-cultural region.

These are part of the „Global Movement” Program (OECD-WBP,

2009; Giovannini, 2009), initiated in 2004 by OECD for measuring and
accelerating Mankind progress.
A great number of countries and regions all over the world, including
the European Union, have joined the program. The accession of facilitators
(chambers of commerce in Banat region, economic development agencies,
professional associations etc.), of determinants (local / regional public
administration bodies in Banat area) and organizations within Banat
company networks to the complex „Global Movement” Program for
measuring and accelerating Mankind progress, in joint cooperation with
OECD and EU, is of utmost importance for both Romania, Serbia and the
DKMT euro-region. The region of Banat can thus become one of the EU
pilot euro-regions to attain sustainable progress, to transfer the expertise
acquired towards other regions and euro-regions.
As an emergent region belonging to the two European emergent
countries, Romania and Serbia, the region of Banat can attain sustainable
progress (on unlimited term) if it succeeds to harmonize / integrates the two
categories of complementary but contradictory objectives (Figure 1):
• Stability objectives
A1 Attractiveness of Banat economy at national / international level
E3 Orientation and sale / export in the proximity Economy
V5 Exploitation of natural, human and social resources (values) of
Banat region
R7 Social welfare cohesion, with no significant promotion of the Risk
(of extended entrepreneurship)
N9 Protection of Natural environment and of biodiversity
• Offensive, sustainable competitiveness objectives
A2 International aggressiveness of Banat region

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E4 Orientation towards / export in the global Economy

V6 Assimilation (conception, investments, production) in Banat region
and high products added Value
R8 Accepting and promotion of the Risk (strong and competitive
entrepreneurship) in Banat region
N10 Relatively negligence and postponing in attaining quality
standards of Natural environment and of biodiversity in Banat region, of
investors in search for profit and export-derived profit.
The stability acquired on the basis of actual tendency of social-
economic changes does not lead to progress, either in Europe (ESPON,
2007; EC-EERP, 2008) or in Romania, Serbia or Banat region. We expect
the “Strategy for sustainable competitiveness of Banat region in Romania-
Serbia cross-border area 2010 – 2015” to be optimal oriented towards
stability and sustainable competitiveness standards.
The complex SWOT analysis and the study of opportunities in Banat
region have produced the main Strategic Action Directions which define the
axes of the Strategy for sustainable competitiveness of Banat region in
Romania-Serbia cross-border area 2010 – 2015 (Figure 1):
AS 1 Cooperation in Romania-Serbia cross-border area
AS 2 Increase of competitiveness in Romania – Serbia cross-border area
AS 3 Development of transport and energy infrastructure
AS 4 Urban development
AS 5 Rural development
AS 6 Tourism development
AS 7 The environment
AS 8 Development of human and social resources and of social services
AS 9 Anti-crisis and post-crisis programs for 2010-2013.
Each strategic axe presents in details (Iovescu, Popa, 2009) policies,
programs and projects for the period 2010 – 2015, correlated to the existing
EU, national, regional and local strategies for 2005 – 2030 in Romania and
Serbia.

Conclusion
This paper develops new concepts and methods in the sustainable
competitiveness integrated strategies. It elaborates a unitary method for the
policies and competitiveness management according to criteria based on
country, regions, county, areas and clusters.
The present article makes a minute analysis of a new research and
action sub-domain called “cluster-based sustainable integrated

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competitiveness (for unlimited term)”, highly important for Romania and the
European Union in the years and decenniums to come.

References
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UNISCI Discussion Papers, No. 22, January 2010, p.142-160, ISSN 1696-
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The Pardee Papers, no. 4, January 2009, Boston.
EC-EERP (2008): A European Economic Recovery Plan, Commission to the
European Council, Com (2008) 800 Final, Brussels.
ESPON (2007): Territorial futures. Spatial scenarios for Europe, Brussels, May
2007.
Garelli S. (2006): Top class competitors: how nations, firms and individuals
succeed in the new world of competitiveness, J. Wiley and Sons, ISBN 0-470-
02569-7.
Giovannini E. et.al. (2009): A Framework to Measure the Progress of Societies,
Working paper, OECD, Paris, September 2009.
Ketels C. (2004): European Clusters, in Structural Change in Europe. Innovative
City and Business Region, Hagbart Publications, Boston.
Kotler P., Caslione J.A. (2009): Chaotics: The Business of Managing and
Marketing in The Age of Turbulence, AMACOM Publishing, New York,
ISBN 978-0814415214.
NGA (2007): Cluster-Based Strategies for Growing State Economies, National
Governors Association, Center for Best Practices, Washington D.C., 44 p.
OECD (2007): Staying Competitive in the Global Economy, OECD Publishing,
Paris, ISBN 9789264034259 .
OECD-WBP (2009): Measuring and Fostering Well-Being and Progress: The
OECD Roadmap, Busan, Corea.
Popa H.L. ş.a. (2002): Management strategic, Editura Dacia, Cluj-Napoca, ISBN
973-35-1524-8 167.
Popa H.L., Pater R.L., Cristea S.L. ş.a. (2008): Managementul competitivităţii
serviciilor, Editura Politehnica, Timişoara, ISBN 978-973-625-648-6.
Popa H.L. (2008): The competitiveness management of clusters, Scientific Bulletin
of the “POLITEHNICA” University of Timişoara, Romania, Transactions on
Management. Engineering Economy. Transportation Engineering, Tom 53
(67), Fasc.2, p. 5-32, ISSN 1224-6050.
Iovescu M., Popa H.L. et.al. (2009): Strategie de dezvoltare economică a Banatului
în Regiunea transfrontalieră România – Serbia 2010-2015 / Strategija
ekonomskog razvoja Banata iz srpsko - rumunskog pograničnog Regiona
2010-2015, Editura Politehnica, Timişoara, ISBN 978-606-554-012-5.
Porter, M.E., (1998): The competitive Advantage of Nations, Free Press, New York.

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Press K. (2006): A Lifecycle for Clusters? The Dynamic of Agglomeration, Change,

and Adaptation, Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg, ISBN 978-3-7908-1710-2.
RO-SNDDR (2008): Strategia Naţională pentru Dezvoltare Durabilă a României.
Orizonturi 2013-2020-2030, Guvernul României, Bucureşti.
RO-SDTR (2008): Conceptul Strategic de Dezvoltare Teritorială România 2030,
Guvernul României, Bucureşti.
RS-NSDS (2008): National Sustainable Development Strategy, Belgrade.
RS-RRSB (2009): Regionalna Razvojna Strategija BANAT 2009-2013, Regionalni
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Sölvell Ö. (2008): Clusters. Balancing Evolutionary and Constructive Forces, Ivory
Tower Publishers, Stockholm, ISBN 978-91-974783-3-5.

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Professor HORIA LIVIU POPA PhD is a Romanian and Euro-regional expert in
“Sustainable Progress Engineering, Management and Governance” domain
(Competitiveness Engineering, Management and Governance; Organizations and
Clusters Competitiveness Management and Marketing; Industrial Engineering). Is
the author of 30 books, 189 scientific papers publish in Romania and international,
84 national and international research – development – consulting projects, 4
patents. He teach “Competitiveness Engineering, Management and Governance”,
“Innovation Management”at University Politehnica of Timisoara, Management
Faculty and at University Dimitrie Cantemir, Tourism and Commerce Faculty of
Timisoara ([email protected] ).

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EDUCATION AND CULTURE

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LEARNING OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT COLLEGES

OF HOTEL MANAGEMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF
KNOWLEDGE APPLICATION IN PRACTICE
Ljiljana Kosar, Mihaela Lazović

Abstract: The specificity of management in hospitality requires a vast variety

of knowledge and skills of employees. The heterogeneity of the professional
profiles correlates with numerous and various services which are integrated
in a hotel product. Besides the practical, technical, marketing and
managerial knowledge, in recent years a due attention has been paid to
communication skills in direct contact between hoteliers and guests. The
fundamental goal of colleges of hospitality management is to master the
functional knowledge based on the optimization of the relationship between
theory and practice. The curriculums of such institutions focus on foreign
language learning. The approach to teaching foreign languages must
synthesize basic professional expertise in hotel management, with special
emphasis on communication skills. The organization of foreign language
teaching, the content of the curriculum and leveling of skills will be presented
in this paper on the example of The College of Hotel Management from
Belgrade. Mastering communication skills in foreign languages is a priority
goal of foreign language teaching at The College of Hotel Management. This
objective is, in part, realized by organizing and implementing student
practical training abroad, where, in direct contact with guests, the students
apply their knowledge.
Key words: hospitality, foreign language learning, knowledge, communication,
application

Introduction
Human recourses are an important component of quality in all domains
of tourism. Their significance is especially prominent in providing services. In
this context, hotel and tourism industry can be singled out due to their specific
qualities. Particularly the hotel services are heterogeneous and spatially and
functionally incorporated in an integral whole. Numerous basic and
supplementary services are provided in hotel facilities in order to meet
different needs of tourists. The quality of their services represents the quality
of the hotel product. Professional and qualified personnel signify a condition
for an excellent realization of the mentioned services. The diversity of services
requires heterogeneous professional profiles. Specialized knowledge and skills
of the staff are prominent in the hotel industry. This fact directly influences the
quality of the hotel product. The dynamic changes of 21st century life style

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have a direct impact on the needs and requirements of tourists and hotel
guests. This means that the quality of the services must be adjusted to
accommodate these changes. In other words, the knowledge and skills are to
be conceived as dynamic categories which may undertake constant changes
and innovations. In this sense, educational institutions in the field of tourism
and hospitality have a great responsibility to adjust their curriculums and
theoretical and practical courses to the contemporary demands.
Professional education in the field of tourism and hospitality takes
place at different levels of the educational system: secondary vocation
schools and university education which may involve studying at colleges and
universities. The education must be correlated with the specific
characteristics of the profession. The quality of the education must be
perceived as a complex progression. The courses may be theoretical,
practical and field. The evaluation of courses involves a complex analysis of
economic conditions, teaching materials and aids, characteristics of teachers
and students. The students’ role is more and more important in the process of
evaluation of the quality of education. This is why the students are actively
involved in the evaluation process in order to improve the quality of
education and to adapt it to their professional needs. The fundamental
objective of the educational system in the field of tourism and hospitality is
to train professionals for working in the industry. This is why we insist on
practical knowledge.
It has been said numerous times that people are the essence of tourism.
The education provided by tourism and hospitality educational institutions
should present competent professionals who will prove the importance of the
human factor in providing good service and meeting the needs of tourists.
Due to the fact that tourism is a global phenomenon which implies constant
verbal communication between people from different countries, the foreign
language learning is an essential skill without which a successful business
cannot exists. For this reason, foreign language learning at the tourism and
hospitality universities represents a crucial part of the learning process. It is
necessary for the students to master the language of their profession during
their education. This means that language teachers need to know the essence
of tourism and hospitality and the way they are manifested in practice.

The Features and Components of the Quality of the Educational

Process in the Toursim and Hospitality
Educational institutions which train students for working in the tourism
and hospitality industry are numerous all over the world, especially in
Europe, which continues to be a leading global tourism destination. This fact

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shows how much attention is paid to the development of tourism as well as

its contribution to national economies. EU countries focus their new political
strategy on solving the unemployment problem, and in this context tourism
has been recognized as an activity that can seriously contribute to solving
this problem. It is logical that an adequate education precedes employment.
Young people are extremely interested to study at the mentioned
institutions. It is primarily a result of certain conceptions about associating
work and travel, making contacts with different cultures, as well as staying at
attractive locations and luxurious hotel facilities. These conceptions are often
one-sided because of the unawareness of the specific requirements in terms
of mastering a variety of complex and multidisciplinary knowledge as well
as working conditions that require a variety of mental and physical efforts.
Bearing all this in mind, a precondition of a quality education is an
adequate selection of future students. This includes testing their
psychological and physical abilities and aptitudes, and pointing out the most
important features of working in the tourism and hospitality industry. Thus,
activities that precede the teaching process should streamline future students
and give them clear notions about their future careers. These activities have
become common in education fairs organized in major cities, and where the
interested young people can inform themselves about the most important
issues about their final career choice.
All educational institutions tend to enroll more students with a clear
and unambiguous choice, and less undecided, who have ''accidentally''
chosen to study tourism and hospitality. In this way, we create a favorable
climate for the realization of our goals and the achievement of high quality
education. One of the initial goals of such education is to create a positive
attitude towards the profession, to encourage motivation for continued
learning and active participation in class, as well as to achieve a vision of the
future where young people see themselves not only as successful business
people, but also as good tourism and hospitality professionals.
The complexity and diversity of tourism and hospitality industry gives
rise to different teaching conceptions. In secondary vocation schools, a due
notice is paid to mastering the basic general knowledge and techniques, i.e.
elementary operative skills depending on the fields of specialty which exist
within the tourism and hospitality profession. College and university
educational system insists on acquirement of organizational, creative and
managerial skills. Depending on the concept of teaching, there is a
comprehensive approach that seeks to form a general profile of tourist and
hotel experts, as well as a specialized approach that focuses on particular
segments of this business. Specialized approach is particularly evident in the

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hotel industry, where the learning process is directed towards the

accommodation sector, restaurant industries, gastronomy, and within these
sectors it is further subdivided.
Contemporary teaching trends in the field of tourism and hospitality
industry indicate a growing orientation toward specialization. This is the
result of monitoring the economy needs by the educational institutions that
are the creators of curriculums and the ones who implement them.
Specialized curriculums have a specific structure that implies certain
correlation between theory and practice. Consequently, the fulfillment of
certain conditions for the performance of both types of instruction is
requisite. It is particularly important to provide the financial conditions for
conducting practical courses. This implies that adequate space and
equipment for practical tourism and hospitality courses must be provided. In
developed countries, tourism and hospitality colleges and universities have
their own restaurants and travel agencies where the students work with
practical training instructors. Such objects, even though they represent
school laboratories, often operate commercially, which means that they are
designed for all types of customers. However, to successfully incorporate
students into practical work during their studies, a prior training period
without customers must be provided. Consequently, it is necessary to
organize a good preparatory practical training with small groups, in order for
the instructors to be able to devote adequate attention and time to each
student. For putting this into practice, it is necessary to have an adequate
number of well-equipped training classrooms and good instructors who will
be able to recognize the special qualities and preferences of individual
students and encourage them to further widen their knowledge and skills, as
well as strive to rectify the weaknesses, if there are any.
The specific method of acquiring knowledge and skills is field work.
There are well-chosen and appropriate facilities where the acquired
theoretical and practical knowledge is applied. In this way, interactive
teaching is provided; it includes the application of knowledge gained in the
classroom.
The material quality components involving the practice space and
equipment are publically available so the potential students can inform
themselves. Curricula with the names, purposes, and program content are
also available as well as adequate basic textbooks and supplementary reading
materials.
The Law on Higher Education, which presupposes the fulfillment of
basic criteria for the accreditation of higher education institutions in Serbia,
creates professional bodies and organs that prescribe mandatory standards,

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the fulfillment of which is a necessary prerequisite for executing the

curriculum. These standards are fully applied to the educational process and
all of its tangible and intangible components are reduced to a measurable
size. The mentioned standards presuppose available space for teaching and
learning for every student, this space is equipped with modern teaching aids,
including computer technology and the Internet, rich library and a reading
room. Particular attention is paid to the expert assessment of the quality of
manuals. In this sense, it is very important that the manuals are compatible
with the curriculum, volume textbook, user-friendliness, clarity, adjustment
to the students’ needs in terms of special emphasis on what is the most
important. The analysis of case studies is considered a particular quality of a
textbook. Case studies involve problem solving; they offer choices and
provide the most suitable solutions. In addition to case studies, tourism and
hospitality textbooks should contain diagrams, illustrations, tables, and
similar enclosures that will best contribute to acquiring the specific
knowledge and skills. This especially applies to foreign language textbooks,
where the practical examples allow the students to easily apply their
knowledge in the direct contact with guests from abroad.
The teaching process must favor the students. Therefore, it is of
particular importance to evaluate the very progress of the teaching process in
the direct communication between the teachers and the students. Given the
fact that the commitment to study at a higher education institution is a
specific expression of free choice of a young adult, students are considered
to be competent to assess the quality of the teacher. This is why the students’
assessment is one of the key components of the quality of teaching.
The standards for the accreditation of higher education institutions
established a mandatory evaluation of education by the students. This is
accomplished via periodic anonymous surveys according to a standardized
questionnaire. It elaborates nine basic criteria for assessing the quality of
teachers' work in direct contact with students:
1. The teacher explains in a clear and understandable manner
2. The teacher explains unambiguously and highlights what is the most
important
3. The teacher presents the curriculum at an appropriate pace during the
semester
4. The teacher comes to class well prepared
5. The teacher teaches according to the agreed timetable and is never
late for class
6. The teacher encourages the involvement and participation of students
in class

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7. The teacher provides useful information about the student (after term
papers, exercises, activities in class)
8. The teacher responds to student’s questions and takes into account
the students' comments
9. My previous grades in this subject are in correlation with the
knowledge I attained.

The first five criteria represent the basis for further improvements of
the quality of teaching and establishing interactive cooperation between the
teachers and the students. They refer to the teacher’s ability to present the
curriculum in a comprehensive way. This is reflected in the clarity and
intelligibility of the presentation, selectivity, good lesson plan and
acknowledgement of the established timetable. In this case, not only the
professional, but also the basic pedagogical quality of teachers whose own
example and professional attitude towards teaching influence the behavior of
students and their future attitude towards work.
The following three criteria are related to teacher’s creativity and
his/her ability to stimulate the students’ creativity, respect their individuality,
recognize their specific areas of interest, and support their views and
opinions. These criteria represent a novelty in the teaching process. Their
adequate application implies the students’ seriousness and maturity as well
as the appropriate professional and pedagogical quality of teachers. The
appliance of these criteria emphasize both the teachers’ and the students’
intellectual potentials and their interactive communication.
The last criterion refers to the objectivity of giving grades. The
application of this criterion is the result of the new approach, which includes
periodic checks of the acquired knowledge during the teaching process, by
means of colloquiums, term papers, homework, etc. This is particularly
important for education in the tourism and hospitality industry because it
allows continuous testing of knowledge and skills as well as evaluation of
their application in practice. This approach allows the teacher to monitor the
development of each individual student and to objectively record his
progress, stagnation or decline. This enables the identification of a problem
and provides an opportunity to resolve it during the semester.

The Importance of Foreign Language Learning for the Hospitality

Management Students
Language is a vital tool that we use to communicate with other people
in our daily and working lives. Good communication in foreign language
becomes so crucial in today’s world due to the impact of globalization. For

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global competitors, the most important factor is the ability to communicate

on a wider, quicker and clearer basis. Knowledge of foreign languages plays
a very important role in the hospitality industry. Hotels and tourism represent
a major source of income. Consequently, effective communications are
significant for sending messages to potential customers. Foreign languages
are used in promotions, invitations and service provision.
Furthermore, foreign languages are important in making a first
impression on tourists. Consequently, foreign tourists and visitors will come
back again to visit the country.
In terms of communication, foreign languages are very important for
business administration, so communicators should not make too many
mistakes, since these can cause problems and delay business. Managers must
use the language properly and communicate effectively. It is their duty to
speak concisely and clearly to their staff or customers. Conciseness and
clarity represent a means to achieve success. If managers do not assign work
clearly, the staff might misunderstand the message which might cause some
conflicts between the managers, the staff and the customers. Then,
communication at work is not only an issue of the knowledge of a foreign
language but it also means that the managers need to know how to use it
properly with respect to different contexts and situations. This will help
managers manage and prevent conflicts that can happen in the workplace.
Communication at work should be pursued carefully because, in the world of
business, mistakes or misunderstandings during agreeing on working
conditions or signing contracts can lead to expensive and long-lasting
problems. In brief, communication in workplace should involve as few
mistakes as possible.
Furthermore, the importance of foreign languages should be
emphasized because of the increasing number of foreign customers. Hotel
managers and staff must be able to communicate using foreign languages
when required. Fluency in foreign languages makes customers satisfied.
In addition, foreign languages may also be used for communication
within the hotel or restaurant mostly in cooperation with foreign
administrators, managers, employers and other foreign employees.
Moreover, foreign languages can be used as means of obtaining
information about foreign customers, foreign employers and employees and
their cultures. It helps managers understand other cultures better which may
reduce potential conflicts.
Various foreign languages used in different service industries like
tourism, hotel and food industries are of great importance. Hospitality
industry combines different service industries that include restaurants,

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lodgings, theme parks, event planning, transportation and other additional

fields in the tourism industry. Most hospitality units like restaurants and
hotels comprise of different groups of facility maintenance, marketing,
management, human resources and direct operations (housekeepers, servers,
porters, kitchen workers and bartenders). In all these departments, different
foreign languages are used in order to ease the communication between the
visitors, mostly tourists, and the employees. The knowledge of different
foreign languages and communication skills are of great importance for the
hospitality industry because it may ease the communication and help in
fulfilling the guest’s requirements. Furthermore, the success of hospitality
and tourism sectors is partially dependent on the employees’ foreign
language communication skills.
It is well known that language is one of the most powerful tool for
communication. With the recent emerging of world globalization, people
who speak two or more languages have a variety of advantages to their
benefit. The various foreign languages used in the hospitality industry
include English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Russian,
Persian, Arabic, Chinese etc.

The Organization of Foreign Language Teaching at The College of

Hotel Management from Belgrade
Besides the practical, technical, marketing and managerial knowledge,
in recent years a due attention has been paid to communication skills in
direct contact between hoteliers and guests.
The fundamental goal of the College of Hotel Management from
Belgrade is to master the functional knowledge based on the balance
between theory and practice. The curriculum of this institution focuses on
foreign language learning. The approach to teaching foreign languages must
synthesize basic professional expertise in hotel management, with special
emphasis on communication skills.
This part of the paper will present the organization of foreign language
teaching, the content of the curriculum and leveling of skills at the College of
Hotel Management from Belgrade. Mastering communication skills in
foreign languages is a priority goal of foreign language teaching at our
College. This objective is realized by organizing and implementing student
practical training abroad, where the students apply their knowledge in direct
contact with guests.
Five foreign languages are taught at the College of Hotel Management:
English, Italian, German, French, and Russian. All the students must learn
two foreign languages. Business English language is obligatory and it is

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taught throughout all three academic years. Business Italian, German,

French, and Russian are elective languages. Students elect one of the
mentioned languages in the first semester and learn it throughout the rest of
their education at the College. The curriculum is unified for all five foreign
languages taught at the College of Hotel Management.
The aim of the foreign language learning is to familiarize the students
with the professional language and business terminology, as well as with
intercultural communication. The acquired foreign language competence is
expected to enable an efficient communication in the workplace, as well as
the use of professional literature written in a foreign language.
Foreign language lessons are divided into two parts: theoretical and
practical.
The theoretical frame of Foreign business language taught during the
first year of study involves: description of different types of accommodation,
hotels, rooms, bathrooms, description of hotel facilities: dining facilities,
recreational facilities, conference facilities, etc., the hotel organization: hotel
divisions and departments, job descriptions in the hotel industry, job
applications, eating establishments and types of restaurants with basic
terminology connected to food service, laying the table, food and meals,
menu, verbs connected to food preparation and methods of cooking,
communication with the guest, description of a meal.
Practical frame of Foreign business language taught during the first
year of study involves: communicational skills and practical usage of a
foreign language by means of dialogues and monologues, class discussion,
student’s project work and PowerPoint presentations.
The theoretical frame of Foreign business language taught during the
second year of study involves: levels of service and hotel categorization,
reservations, registration or check-in, check-out and paying the bill, hotel
services, complaints, dining-room staff, obligations and commitments of the
employees, communication between and with the employees in a restaurant:
expressing obligation, permission, proposals, orders, offers… types of
service, parts of a meal/courses (hors d’oeuvre, appetizer, entrée, soups,
main course, dessert, savoury…), the structure of a menu, names of meals,
description of dishes (main ingredients, method of preparing and cooking,
method of serving), national specialties, kitchen staff, hygiene and safety,
kitchen utensils, verbs connected with cooking and preparing food, recipes.
Practical frame of Foreign business language taught during the second
year of study involves: communicational skills and practical usage of a
foreign language by means of dialogues and monologues, class discussion,
student’s project work and PowerPoint presentations.

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The theoretical frame of Foreign business language taught during the third
year of study involves: advertising materials, hotel brochures, promotion of a
hotel, describing a resort hotel, front office communications, hotel switchboard,
a telephone conversation, hotel reception documentation, informing the guests
about the hotel services and amenities, business correspondence (formal letter,
e-mail, fax, etc.) description of national cuisines, contemporary gastronomy
trends, beverage service in bars and restaurants, wines and wining, cheese,
human resources (selection and recruitment).
Practical frame of Foreign business language taught during the third
year of study involves: communicational skills and practical usage of a
foreign language by means of dialogues and monologues, class discussion,
student’s project work and PowerPoint presentations.

The Application of Foreign Language Learning in Practice

As it has been previously mentioned, mastering the foreign language
communication skills is one of the essential goals at The College of Hotel
Management. This aim is realized during student practical training abroad. It
gives our students an opportunity to apply their knowledge of foreign
languages in the direct communication with the guests, managers and
coworkers.
In the last year, over 150 of our students attended practical training
abroad.
The following table shows the countries, places and cities and the total
number of students who attended practice there.

Table 1. Students’ practical training abroad, 2012

Number of
Country Place / City
students
France Adriatic coast 7
Mexico Cancun 6
Greece Khalkidhiki, Crete, Athens 50
Slovenia Kranjska Gora 5
Slovak Republic Bardejovske Kupele 4
Macedonia Lake Ohrid 7
Russia Sankt Petersburg 11
Poland Kielce 6
Spain Marbella 21
Germany Immenstaad, Fehmarn, Hamburg 21
Block Island, Dickinson, Highlands,
USA 29
Northeast Harbor, New Jersey, Pittsburgh
TOTAL 167
Source: The College of Hotel Management, Belgrade, Serbia

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When asked to elaborate on their use of foreign languages during

practice, the students usually answered that they mostly used the language
spoken in the country they went to. This was an opportunity for them to
practice communication in English, Italian, Russian, German, and French. If
they did not know the language spoken in the country, they mostly used the
English language, some of them even learned to communicate at the
beginner’s level in the language of the country they had practice in.
Depending on the job assigned to the students, they actively used the
language they learned at our College.
Some of the students were working at the reception. They engaged in
the conversation about different types of accommodation, hotel rooms,
bathrooms, they informed the guests about the hotel services and amenities,
their job involved front office communications, hotel switchboard, telephone
reservations, they were in charge of hotel reception documentation, i.e. they
created control books, wall charts, computer files, guest history records,
reservation diaries, arrival lists, etc. Consequently, they were in charge of
making reservations, registration or check-in, check-out and settling the bill,
and guest complaints.
Other students worked at a restaurant, thus they used basic terminology
connected to food service, food preparation and methods of cooking and
serving, menu, laying the table. In the direct communication with the guests
they described parts of a meal/courses (hors d’oeuvre, appetizer, entrée,
soups, main course, dessert, savoury…), menu: the structure, names of meals
and beverages, description of dishes (main ingredients, method of preparing
and cooking, method of serving), national specialties. Those who worked at
the bar learned the names of different beverages and how to prepare and
serve cocktails.
All the students who attended the practice considered the knowledge of
foreign languages attained at the College of Hotel Management very useful
in real and professional life.

Conclusion
The quality of education is a basic prerequisite for the achievement of
educational goals in the field of tourism and hospitality, which is to educate
competent professionals who will use their knowledge and skills well and
who will be able to respond to all challenges. Comprehensiveness and
measurable quality of teaching lies in its tangible and intangible components
which provide the possibility for the students to evaluate their teacher’s
work. This aims to continuously improve the quality of all the participants in
the learning process. Responsibility of foreign language teachers is

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particularly important because the students must be able to use their

knowledge of foreign languages in communication with foreign guests. On
one hand, there is the contact and communication with foreign guests in the
student’s own country or in the region where the communication with
managers and employees exercised their native language. And on the other,
is the student’s summer practice abroad, where the application of knowledge
of foreign languages is realized in two dimensions: in communication with
guests as well as with managers and other employees. Apart of the
knowledge of the English language which has become a global means of
communication in between people, it is important to insist on knowledge of
language spoken in the country where the students reside during the practice.
Therefore, the main goal of The College of Hotel Management from
Belgrade is to continually improve the student’s knowledge of foreign
languages, insisting on all the components of the quality teaching, as well as
preparing students for international competitions and summer practice.
Raising the level of students’ knowledge of foreign languages, from the point
of application in practice, is an important condition for the further
strengthening of international cooperation of The College of Hotel
Management, both with similar educational institutions, and with the hotel
companies.

References
Deming, W. E. 1996. Kako izaći iz krize, Beograd, Grmeč.
Kosar, Lj., Rašeta, S., 2005. Izazovi kvaliteta, Viša hotelijerska škola, Beograd.
Kosar, Lj., 2012. Hotelijerstvo I, VHŠ, Beograd.
Maslov, A., 2004. Psihologija u menadžmentu, Novi Sad, Adozes.
Milojević, Lj., Nova EU turistička politika: Ka jačem partnerstvu u evropskom
turizmu, Stručni časopis iz oblasti turizma ”Turistički pregled”, br. 5, p. 57-62.
Milosavljević, G., 1997. Organizacija treninga, Službeni glasnik, Beograd.
The Law on Higher Education, Službeni glasnik RS 76/05.
Acreditation Report, 2012. The College of Hotel Management, Belgrade.
Documentation about the Student Practical Training, The College of Hotel
Management, Belgrade.

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

Prof. dr. LJILJANA KOSAR (The College of Hotel Management, Belgrade,
Serbia, [email protected]) graduated and obtained her Magister’s and
Doctor’s degree at the Department of Tourism at the Faculty of Sciences,
University of Belgrade. Since 1979. she has been working at Universities. She was
elected full professor in 2003. at the University of Novi Sad (Faculty of Sciences,

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Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management). Scientific fields of

interest: hotel management, classification, categorization, standardization of
accommodation facilities, the structure of hotel product, management of quality in
the hotel industry. She is the author and coauthor of about 100 scientific papers
and 10 textbooks. She participated in numerous national and international
conferences.

Dr. MIHAELA LAZOVIC (The College of Hotel Management, Belgrade, Serbia,

[email protected]) is a full professor of English language at The College of Hotel
Management in Belgrade.
She obtained the title Professor of English Language and Literature (2003) as
well as the title of Magister in Linguistics (2009) and Doctor in Linguistics (2012) at
the English Language Department at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi
Sad.
She published over 20 scientific papers in the field of comparative linguistics
and participated in many national and international conferences.
She is also a published translator (English, Romanian and Serbian).

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NEW PERSPECTIVES ON FORMAL

AND INFORMAL LEARNING: A STUDENTS’
REPRESENTATIONS ANALYSIS
Laura Ioana Coroamă

Abstract: Modern society does not envisage school as an exclusive learning

environment any more. New technologies and complex interaction and
organisational patterns constantly challenge learning modalities and
stimulate the emergence of new learning strategies. This proposal focuses on
the study of secondary school students’ representations concerning formal
and informal learning of English in a Romanian environment.
Key words: formal learning, informal learning, learning environment,
plurilingualism

Introduction
There are many reasons why formal and informal language learning is
an interesting and worthy area of study. Current research has highly focused
on formal learning and teaching of foreign languages showing little interest
as far as “outside the school learning” is concerned. However, informal
learning has a history within educational and social thought, and attitudes
towards learning languages in various environments are more complex than
one might expect at first.
The present paper represents a part of a wider project that investigates
the constructs of formal and informal learning of foreign languages in the
Banat region. I am particularly interested in English as a foreign language
learnt and taught in a multilingual and multicultural environment.
I will consider the following areas: language biography, students’
representations regarding foreign languages, learning within a community of
practice and learning strategies. In particular, I will examine different levels
of convergence and discontinuity between these areas.

The specificity of a plurilingual context of research

The research I have been conducted for about four years is situated in
the Banat region. This area represents a particular example of linguistic and
cultural co-habitation which has given birth to a variety of language learning
approaches.
The historic and political evolution of this region, placed at the Serbian
and Hungarian borders, led to a continuous reassessment of the linguistic and
cultural repertoire of its inhabitants. This is the reason why the population of
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this area represents the embodiment of European values crystallized through

centuries and having a Latin model at its origin. Later on, Byzantine and
Slavic influences reshaped the linguistic heritage. Nowadays, the four
languages and cultures the most represented are: Romanian, Serbian,
German and Hungarian.
However, some historical moments have to be mentioned in order to
understand the turning points which caused the creation of a language and
cultures creuset in the West of the country. The Banat region has known a
powerful phenomenon of colonisations during the 18th and 19th centuries. On
one hand, the Hapsburg Empire was trying to restructure its crowded areas,
extremely affected by a social and economic crisis. On the other hand, Banat
was meant to function as a region which should have protected the empire
from possible enemy attacks. Even more, the very rich economic potential of
Banat laid at the origin of the Hapsburg colonization. These social
movements have also changed the social, linguistic and political structure of
the local population, creating thus a new multi-ethnic and plurilingual
community. These colonisations have encouraged the emergence of new
mentalities and put the basis of another type of education: opened to the
acknowledgement of other languages and cultures, based on tolerance and
collective thinking and living. In other words, the social phenomena gave
birth to an intercultural society, sensible to the foreign element and dynamic
from several points of view.
This tolerant and permissive context suffered not only ideological and
political transformations but linguistic too when the communist regime was
installed. The status of Russian shadowed both the regional minorities’
languages and other foreign languages too. However, in Banat, the former
continued to be used especially in private environments, such as the family,
groups of friends, etc. The linguistic policies from the last twenty years have
prioritized two aspects:
• valorisation of minorities’ languages and
• the importance of foreign languages learning from a young age.
The reform of the Romanian educational system has known a dynamic
reconsideration between 1997 and 2000. It was characterized by the
implementation of a new direction, namely from an ethnocentric educational
system towards a flexible one, receptive to linguistic shifts and learners’ needs.

The ecological approach of language learning in a plurilingual region

Language learning is powerfully linked to the environment where this
process takes place. The historical conditions presented here have
emphasized the continuity of languages in Banat due to their practice in

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isolated contexts. Therefore, one has to analyse language learning processes

in relation with the particularities of the context where this language is
practiced.
Taking into consideration the theories of chaos and complexity
regarding language learning (Larsen-Freeman 1997, 2002) and perceiving
the language class as a social ecosystem, the ecological approach focuses on
the elements of the environment that make things happen the way they do.
From the point of view of ecological linguistics, context is not only a
background for language but it defines it while simultaneously is being
defined by it (van Lier 2004). Ecology is the study of predictable and
unpredictable influences that have an impact on language learning. This
approach actually favours interconnections, centre-multiplicity and the in-
between spaces which emerge among learning situations. Thus, the
ecological approach is appropriate to our study because it does not ignore the
various influences of environmental elements on the learner’s learning
activity.
Language learning in Banat includes not only foreign languages, taught
in a formal environment, but minority languages too. Therefore, an
ecological perspective fits this heterogeneous linguistic structure as language
learners are gradually developing various patterns, both of action and
knowledge-in-action through their interactions with others and with various
contexts such as formal, non-formal and informal contexts.
The evolutionary pattern of the ecological theory rejects the linear
process of language acquisition while advancing a complex view of learning:
Ecological linguistics regards language learning not as gradual, linear acquisition,
but as emergence. Emergence happens when relatively simple elements combine
together to form a higher-order system. The whole is not only more than the sum of
its parts, it is of a different nature than the parts. The new system is on a different
scale, and has different meanings and patterns of functioning than the simpler
ingredients had from which emerged. (van Lier 2004:5)

According to van Lier, in terms of learning, the notion of emergence is

tightly related to affordance, a term which indicates a relationship between a
learner and the environment where his/her contact with the language takes
place. In this paper, I will particularly discuss the formal and informal
environment as potentially rich resources of language learning in this
plurilingual region.
In order to summarise this part, I will mention the characteristics of the
ecological approach: relations, context, patterns and systems, emergence,
quality, value, critical perspective, variability, diversity and activity (van
Lier 2004).

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Formal vs. informal learning

If formal learning is commonly associated with a specific category of
institutions, such as schools, colleges or universities, defining informal
learning becomes a difficult task. I will borrow the characterization provided
by the European Commission, according to which:
Learning that is not organised or structured in terms of goals, time or instruction.
This covers skills acquired (sometimes unintentionally) through life and work
experience, for example:
• project-management or IT skills acquired at work
• languages and intercultural skills acquired during a stay abroad
• IT skills acquired outside work
• skills acquired through volunteering, cultural activities, sports, youth work
and through activities at home (e.g. taking care of a child).

The absence of structure and organisation and the emphasis of life

experience shape the content of the informal learning. However, the latter
was anticipated and developed by the representatives of social theories of
education: E. Lindeman (1926), J.M. Brew (1947, 1955), J. Dewey (1968,
1969, 1978), I. Illich (1973, 1975, 1976). They globally argued the benefits
of learning through experience and within a community and pointed out the
disadvantages of schooling.
Minorities’ languages in Banat emerged in an exclusively informal
environment, supported however by a formal one starting with the schooling
age. Nowadays, unfortunately, learning local languages has dramatically
decreased, English being promoted as a lingua franca in a variety of
environments. Despite this ideological linguistic and cultural shift, English
too benefits both from its formal and informal support as it will be discussed
in the data analysis part of this paper.

Communities of practice as informal environments of language

learning
Announced by social theories and developed by Jean Lave and Etienne
Wenger, communities of practice are
re-formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared
domain of human endeavour: a tribe learning to survive, a band of artists seeking
new forms of expression, a group of engineers working on similar problems, a
clique of pupils defining their identity in the school, a network of surgeons
exploring novel techniques, a gathering of first-time managers helping each other
cope. In a nutshell: Communities of practice are groups of people who share a
concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they
interact regularly. (Wenger, 2007)

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They argue that these communities are everywhere and that we are at
the same time members in several communities: within our families, at work,
in various associations, etc. The students of our study also activate in a
multitude of communities where there is potential for language learning: they
learn them at school, they take private courses or they attend private
language schools. Watching television and films, listening to music with
colleagues, families or friends or joining virtual communities are other
examples of groups who share the same interest and these activities may led
to the emergence of learning.

Students’ representations on their language biography

The results presented in this paper are issued from both a quantitative
and a qualitative research. Thus, the analysed data has been gathered from
100 questionnaires filled by secondary school students on a voluntary basis.
The respondents were selected from the urban and rural environment and
their age is between 11 and 14 years old. The quantitative dimension
provided important elements for a more thorough qualitative research
consisting of 10 interviews with students who have answered to the previous
questionnaires.
As far as their language biography is concerned, the results of the
questionnaires have pointed out the following aspects:
• the secondary school students we questioned learn English, French
and German in a formal environment;
• 38% of them named Romanian as the language they like to speak at
home whilst 49% indicated both Romanian and English as favourite
languages;
• when asked to give examples of languages they would like to learn,
the students enumerated several languages from languages spoken at
home, Serbian or Hungarian, to Korean and Chinese;
• the data analysis identified a pre-school acquisition stage: at home, in
cultural centres or by media-related activities.
The interviews, on the other hand, permitted a more detailed analysis
as the students felt comfortable in expressing their opinions about language
learning and also about the environment they live and learn in. One of the
key themes which emerged from these data was students’ perceptions of the
plurilingual environment of their region. If the younger ones showed
themselves only aware of the rich linguistic repertoire, the 14-year old
teenagers also acknowledged the benefits of speaking some of the minorities’
languages: you can find a job easier; you can visit and work in the country
where the language is spoken or you can understand what people speak
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around you. Even more, respondents in whose families, people speak

minorities’ languages mentioned the acquisition of partial skills such as oral
comprehension, for example: although they refuse speaking in Hungarian
they understand it.
Learning languages is also a part of their participation in virtual
communities: playing games in networks or communicating with foreign
teenagers on common themes. Students feel that languages are tools for
accessing information, knowledge in general. Their choice of languages
depends both on their cognitive and emotional needs and on the demands of
the environment.

English as a foreign language or a new lingua franca?

In this contextual framework, English has a special status, being a
language specific both to the formal and informal environment. The majority
of subjects included English in several categories as the language they prefer,
they speak at home, they learn at school, they watch films and listen to
music, etc. Teenagers have also associated English with strong emotional
connotations. Furthermore, for 58% of the subjects, this language is very
important while for 34% of them is important.
Not only have the students manifested positive representations
regarding English but they also have a well-developed feeling of self-
efficiency, indicating good (42%) or good enough (41%) when asked to
appreciate their language level. The level indicators were mostly
communicating abroad (87%), comprehension of films and songs (55%),
grades at school (50%). They do not show awareness regarding the different
types of environments where they learn the language but they exemplify
means of accessing information situated in a variety of contexts.
However, the interviews put forward the relation between the feeling
of personal efficiency and informal or non-formal learning. 4 out of 10
students said they have learnt more English outside school: music and films
contributing a lot to their learning. They also mention private classes as
extremely helpful because, in this case, the teacher focuses only on their
needs and problems, a similar situation being more difficult or impossible in
a formal context. These results are supported by a 2011 report which states
that “personalisation, collaboration and informalisation (informal learning)
will be at the core of learning in the future.” (The Future of Learning:
Preparing for Change)
English is not only present in teenagers’ daily life but it is also
promoted by teachers, media, political, economical and cultural factors
which make it almost mandatory in any professional or educational area. In

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these circumstances, more and more parents require English classes from an
early age while, later on, formal learning of English is completed by other
activities in which the language is further practiced.
Students’ perceptions about the strategies they use in order to attain
certain skills in English underline:
• an eclectic use of strategies which are adapted according to the
environmental characteristics;
• the use of task-related and evaluation-oriented strategies in the
formal environment;
• the preference for strategies depending on learners’ emotions and
needs in the informal environment;
• the development of adaptive skills at a conscious or unconscious
level.

Conclusions
The purpose of this paper was to open a wide perspective on secondary
school students’ perception on language learning in a specific Romanian
region. The data analysis emphasized that Romanian students have positive
representations about English learning. They also make use of interrelated
skills and learning strategies which they adapt depending on the environment
specificity. Adapted learning skills emerge in contextual diversity and
reshape the learning and teaching approach. Although English detains a
powerful status in students’ representations, other languages are not totally
ignored as they are a constitutive part of the context the students live in.
However, an excessive emphasis on English and English learning may
gradually lead to the variation of the impact and importance of other
languages. As long as students’ perceptions of languages are influenced by
others’ opinions as well (teachers, parents, friends, etc.), one should pay
attention to the emergence of new language mediators, especially those
present in the virtual environment.

References
Aden, J. (ed.). 2009. Didactiques de langues-cultures: univers de croyance et
contextes. Paris: Le Manuscrit Université.
Babeţi, A. 2007. Le Banat: Un Eldorado aux confins. Paris : Editions de
l’Université Paris IV-Sorbonne.
Brougère, G. & H. Bézille. 2007. « De l’usage de la notion d’informel dans
le champ de l’éducation », Revue française de Pédagogie n° 158 :
117-160.

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Coroamǎ, L. 2010. "Une analyse comparée des univers de croyance des

élèves roumains concernant le plurilinguisme" in J. Aden, T.
Grimshaw & H.Penz (dir./eds.), Enseigner les langues-cultures à
l'ère de la complexité. Teaching Language in Culture in an Era of
Complexity. Brussels. P.I.E Peter Lang, Coll GramR.
Demorgon, J. 1996. Complexité des cultures et de l’interculturel. Paris :
Anthropos.
Illich, I.1973. Deschooling Society. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Kramsch, C. (dir.). 2002. Language acquisition and language socialization:
Ecological perspectives. London: Continuum.
Larsen-Freeman, D. 1997. « Chaos/complexity science and second language
acquisition ». Applied Linguistics 18.2 : 141–165.
Lave, J. & E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral
Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Penz, H. 2010. "Teaching Strategies for Achieving Understanding in the
Language Classroom" in J. Aden, T. Grimshaw & H.Penz (dir./eds.),
Enseigner les langues-cultures à l'ère de la complexité. Teaching
Language in Culture in an Era of Complexity. Brussels. P.I.E Peter
Lang, Coll GramR.
Van Lier, L. 2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning. New
York: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Wenger, E. 2005. La théorie des communautés de pratique. Québec: les
Presses de l’Université Laval.

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

LAURA IOANA COROAMA is PhD student UNAM, CREN EA 2661, INEDUM,
University of Maine, France ([email protected]). She has published
various articles.

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INTRODUCING THE MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE

TO UNIVERSITY STUDENTS
Luiza Caraivan

Abstract: The paper analyses the possible definitions of cultural competence

taking into account the multicultural characteristic of higher education and of
the e-learning environments. It also considers some modalities to make
students aware of the importance of becoming culturally competent, as it is one
of the main requirements on the job market. It is essential that teachers and
instructors should also include the skills to become culturally competent in
their curricula. In this respect, teachers have been increasingly preoccupied
with culturally-based adaptive education, especially those involved in online
learning environments. The paper explores the literature connected to this
topic, focusing on relevant conclusions that could be used for future research.
The present study also takes into consideration 'the other side', analyzing the
feedback from a group of university students who were part of a Business
Communication course that integrated aspects of multicultural competence in
the curriculum. During the course, various dimensions of culture and cultural
differences were identified in order to introduce students to potential situations
that could require them to be (multi)culturally competent. Finally, we address
the challenges faced both by university teachers and students and we suggest
how cultural issues should be solved instead of avoiding them. Some solutions
refer to developing culturally appropriate communication, directly addressing
critical cultural differences, and last but not least, modifying the educational
curricula and process.
Keywords: cultural identity, diversity, multicultural education

The multicultural competence requirement

Multiculturalism and the acceptance of diversity have become major
issues since the world was defined as a global village and since the “story of
our times” reflected “an increasingly interconnected world where concepts
that appear to be unrelated actually are related” (Johansson 2006 21). The
mobility of people across cultures and countries has caused a “rise of
intersections” (Johansson 2006:21). Defining multiculturalism and putting it
from theory into practice are two crucial points on official agendas.
Nowadays, multicultural competence is a requirement in fields such as
literature, arts, health care, education and even business – especially for
human resources, and governmental agencies. One of the most circulated
definitions of multicultural competence refers to the “ability to understand,
communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures” or
with different social and economic backgrounds Martin, Vaughn 2007: 31).
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Multicultural competence is a process that can be developed over many

years, depending on the geographical space and on people’s mentality, as
society has to evolve so that multiculturalism can go from theory to practice.
Multicultural competence has also been defined as “the ability in
personal and professional contexts to interact respectfully and effectively
with diverse individuals and groups in a manner that recognizes, affirms, and
values the worth, and protects the rights and dignity of all” (Vernooy, Harris
2010: 2).
Cultural competence is strongly related to culture, which can be seen
as a frame of reference for each individual perception of the world. Thus,
culture influences traditions, beliefs, experience, education and social status.
In this respect, multicultural competence implies having the ability to
recognize different cultures, understand their values and appreciate
differences. Although communities are not bias-free, efforts should be made
to implement the idea that no culture is superior to another.
Multicultural competence can also be defined as “a set of congruent
behaviors, attitudes and policies that come together as a system, agency or
among professionals and enable that system, agency or those professionals to
work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (Cross 1989:13).
A more complex definition sees cultural competence as a “developmental
process that evolves over an extended period. Both individuals and
organizations are at various levels of awareness, knowledge and skills along the
cultural competence continuum” (Borrego, Johnson 2012).
The fact that multicultural competence has been described in a variety
of definitions, using various concepts and frameworks can be explained by
the diversity of cultures within a community and the variety of domains that
require this type of competence.
North American countries have been using this concept since the
1950s, whereas Western European countries have focused upon
multiculturalism in the late 1960s. However, Eastern European countries
have only been interested in this component since the beginning of the 21st
century. In Romania, some steps have been made towards introducing this
competence in education, health care and business sectors starting with the
year 1991 when several waves of refugees coming from countries at war
have entered the Romanian communities. Although Romanian universities
have been dealing with foreign students for a longer period of time, the
tendency was to integrate them into Romanian communities rather than
acknowledge diversity and appreciate difference. Unfortunately, there have
also been cases of discrimination and isolation of certain ethnically and
culturally diverse groups.

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As the diversity of students in universities is continually increasing,

understanding and integrating the multicultural competence into the
curriculum becomes compulsory.

Components of the multicultural competence

Some researchers consider that the multicultural competence comprises
three components: awareness, knowledge and skills (Pedersen 2007:10),
whereas more recent literature speaks about four components, adding
attitude to the list.
Awareness refers to an individual’s position within a certain
community and how it affects the individual’s values, beliefs, assumptions
and behaviour towards the others. It also implies understanding how an
individual’s point of view may result in a type of behaviour that affects the
others. Awareness can be simply defined as the ability of understanding
difference.
The knowledge component refers to learning specific information
about different cultures, about the self and the individuals who are different
from the self. However, acquiring knowledge about (in)equality, rights or
exclusion and inclusion is not sufficient and may prove to be inconsistent
with both individual and collective behaviors.
The third component focuses on the skills to communicate with people
from different cultures. Both verbal and non-verbal communication is
fundamental when interacting with people from cultures different from our
own. It is essential to identify and discuss differences, although
communication skills vary from culture to culture.
Finally, the attitude component underlines the difference between
acquiring knowledge, increasing awareness and training for communicating
with the cultural other, in order to reconsider and redefine the individual’s
own values and behaviours about difference.
These four components of multicultural competence should be
integrated across curricula so that students should have the knowledge and
the skills to recognise otherness. Moreover, students should manifest a
positive attitude towards the different cultural other.

Achieving multicultural competence

Firstly, multicultural competence, understood as the manifestation of
respect and recognition of cultural values that are different from the self’s
cultural values, can be achieved by becoming aware of “personal and
culturally learned assumptions or biases” Corey, Schneider 2011). Although
comprehension of the cultural other is also influenced by biases, identifying

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them is an essential step towards introducing this competence in educational

processes. Thus, students may be engaged in activities that should encourage
them to recognize misconceptions and manage commonly held beliefs, in
order to become culturally competent.
Secondly, an important movement towards achieving cultural
competence is to increase knowledge about particular cultures. In this
respect, direct contact with members of a culturally different community is
the key to make students more aware of diversity. Language may be a barrier
and communication may be hindered by nonverbal-signs that can be
misinterpreted. That is why, students should learn about different cultures.
Thirdly, interaction is a means to facilitate comprehension of the
cultural other. When it is appropriate, students may take part in various
traditional events that can improve communication.
Universities should incorporate multicultural competence in curricula
and should take into consideration the so-called teaching-to-transform
process. Transformative teaching is based on acquired knowledge and skills
and is aiming to encourage a positive attitude towards the cultural other. At
the same time, it stimulates critical thinking as a new component of the
multicultural competence. Critical thinking can be defined as a combination
between awareness of the self and of the other and the ability to acquire
knowledge about the other being as bias-free as possible.

Integrating the multicultural competence in the curriculum

The integration of the multicultural competence in Romanian curricula
is not an easy task, especially since the four components are also part of the
transformative teaching process.
Nevertheless, we have started to integrate them in the University
curricula due to the fact that business students manifested interest in working
for multinational companies or for managers with different cultural
background. That is the main reason why we have designed communication
courses which are meant to offer students the opportunity to discuss a variety
of issues that influence their behavior towards different cultures. These
issues include race, gender, age, language, ability and disability, social and
economic status, religion, national origin, sexual identity.
One of the activities that I have designed in order to make students
aware of the importance of the multicultural competence is the following: First
of all, students are given list of names and they should guess the nationality
and the gender of a person with that name. Secondly, they are offered images
of both men and women and they have to give those images an identity. Then,
students are asked to make a description of that person based on their

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perception of a certain culture, taking into consideration the following

categories: age, social status, economic status, educational background,
religion, nationality, abilities or disabilities. This type of activity raises
awareness of how individuals perceive the others and also offers feedback on
their knowledge about other cultures. Students’ skills and attitudes may be
improved or even altered after receiving feedback, so that their ability to
become part of a team and accept diversity should be put into practice.
The reality of the labour market requires students – as future employees
- to be culturally competent, due to the fact that companies create their own
organizational culture. Organizational culture generally promotes interaction
and communication among individuals with various backgrounds, which
means it is essential to have the skills to identify and understand the cultural
other. An employee who is culturally competent may also adapt in a natural
manner to unexpected events. The ability to learn from different cultures and
to empathise with the cultural other is always appreciated within a team as it
leads to creativity and innovations (Borrego, Johnson 2012).
In this respect, multicultural education should be included in all
universities and it should go beyond the accumulation of knowledge and
raising awareness. Reconsidering individual attitudes and working on
individual skills is essential when speaking about culturally competent
students who will become employees, managers, mentors, health care
providers, etc. Education providers will have a major role in the near future
as more and more culturally different people inhabit the same territory.
Although the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, declared that “the
approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to
enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed” (Merkel 2010), we must
remember that by integrating the multicultural competence in education and
in various curricula there is the possibility to change attitudes and behaviours
both of teachers and students, both of the self towards the other and of the
other towards the self.

Conclusions
The multicultural competence is a highly debated issues and whether it
will be successful or not remains for the future generations to judge. However,
the four components of this type of competence: awareness, knowledge, skills
and attitude – to which we have added critical thinking as a fifth component,
are essential in various fields and sectors. In a multicultural society, teams are
created and diversity is managed in a positive way. Culturally diverse
communities imply more than race and ethnicity. Finally, universities behave

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as a community, receiving various students with different backgrounds, while

integrating culturally diverse students remains a challenge.

References
Borrego, E., Johnson, R. G. 2012. Cultural Competence for Public
Managers. Managing Diversity in Today’s World. CRC Press, Taylor
and Francis Group. Boca Raton. E-book.
Corey, G., Schneider Corey, M., Callanan, P. 2011. Issues and Ethics in the
Helping Professions. Cengage Learning. Belmont. Page Corey, G.,
Schneider Corey, M., Callanan, P. 2011.
Cross T., Bazron, B., Dennis, K., Isaacs, M. 1989. Towards a Culturally
Competent System of Care, volume I. Georgetown University Child
Development Center. Washington.,
Johansson, F., 2006. The Medici Effect: What Elephants and Epidemics Can
Teach Us about Innovation. Harvard Business School Press. Boston.
Martin, M., Vaughn, B.E., 2007. Cultural competence: The nuts and bolts of
diversity and inclusion. In Strategic Diversity & Inclusion
Management Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1,
Merkel, A. 2010. Available http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-
11559451. Accessed on 1st March 2013.
Pedersen, P. 2007. Ethics, Competence, and Professional Issues in Cross-
cultural Counselling. Available http://www.sagepub.com/upm-
data/15654_Chapter_1.pdf Accessed on 1st March 2013.
Vernooy, J., Harris, C. 2010. Multicultural Competence in the WSU
Curriculum: A Proposal. Available
http://www.wright.edu/academicaffairs/policies/MulticulturalCompete
nce.pdf Accessed on 1st March 2013.

NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

LUIZA CARAIVAN is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Management in
Tourism and Commerce Timişoara, „Dimitrie Cantemir” Christian University. She
holds a PhD. in English literature. She is the author of First Steps in Business English
(2009) and Writing for Business (2011). She has also published numerous articles
and studies in journals and magazines from Romania and abroad (Orizont –
Timişoara, British and American Studies - Timişoara, Romanian Journal of English
Studies – Timişoara, Europa –Novi Sad etc).

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A PLEA FOR ECONOMIC HERMENEUTICS

Gheorghe Băileşteanu
Anda Laura Lungu
Universitatea de Vest Timișoara
Facultatea de Economie și de Administrare a Afacerilor

Abstract: Starting from Schleiermacher’s theories, who speaks about

“special Hermeneutics” as foundation for Universal Hermeneutics, we
consider that Economics, in order to progress, must assimilate the term of
Economic Hermeneutics as a general theory of the interpretation rules, a
meditation on the interpretation activity, with accents on the normative
character (Schleiermacher), but also on the phenomenological aspect
(Heidegger, Ricoeur, etc). Our scientific approach is intended as a plea for
the interpretation of the economic phenomena and processes from an
objective–and actual - historical perspective, intransitive, transitive,
dogmatic, synchronic and diachronic one. We believe that the foundation of
an economic hermeneutical approach can be built on what the Stoics called
signification (semeiotike) to which we may add Semantics and Logical
Pragmatics. By accepting Semiotics as a foundation for Economic
Hermeneutics, we implicitly ought to accept its operational instruments: sign,
symbol, symbolic language, semantic trees etc. A modern interpretation
theory in economy which we call Economic Hermeneutics, in opposition to
the classical theories of Heidegger, Schleiermacher or Gadamer, must, we
think, also take over the perspective of Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative
structures. This is why we shall operate with terms such as: chance,
necessity, determinism, nondeterminism, option, unexpected, foresight,
visioning. We see it as a pioneering approach in the economic research.
Many issues are for us still in the primary research stage and we would
regard it as an achievement if others, starting from some of our hypotheses,
could develop a better theory.
Key terms: Economic Hermeneutics, Pragmatics, Semantics, Economic
Semiotics, Syntax

Short history
For laymen, Hermeneutics is the science of interpreting biblical and
literary texts. This leads to the similarity between Hermeneutics and
Exegesis. The connection between the two sciences, Hermeneutics and
Exegesis, was studied by Fee and Stuart. They emphasize that: “Although
the word “hermeneutics” ordinarily covers the whole field of interpretation,
including exegesis, it is also used in the narrower sense of seeking the
contemporary relevance of ancient texts” (Fee,Stuart 1998: 30). For
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Heidegger, however, comprehension is not a result of exegesis but the basis

of any interpretation or explanation, as a way of being of the interpreter
(Dasein). The catalyst of the messages is the Dasein, namely the thinking,
whereas the term truth is based on the Greek termaletheia (Clinci 2010)
which he translates as “a state of unconcealedness”, of “dis- closure”. As a
follower of philosophical Hermeneutics, Heidegger has as a main target of
interpretation the transformation of the obscure elements into clear
structures, this being the essence of any human activity. For the man, the
“Umwelt“ is not essential as such, but important is his understanding and his
integration in universality, at a certain historical moment, with his specific
features. “This universality of the phenomenon of interpretation is the one
which is at the basis of Hermeneutics as science” (Rambu 1998: 4). The
nature of universality of Hermeneutics is a premise for the development of
the hermeneutic approach in Economics.
Schleiermacher speaks about “special Hermeneutics” as foundation for
Universal Hermeneutics, which is, in its turn, materialized into a plurality of
forms, of types of Hermeneutics (Schleiermacher 1977: 75).
Nowadays, we can speak about a Hermeneutics of jurisprudence, of
arts. Thus, there were developed applications of Hermeneutics in the legal
sciences (Legal Hermeneutics), in Arts (Musical Hermeneutics) and so on.
A first conclusion would be that over time Hermeneutics becomes a
general theory of the interpretation rules, a reflection on the interpretation
activity. Without excluding other approaches, two directions are obvious
here: Hermeneutics is an art which establishes clear rules of interpretation
(Schleiermacher), a normative character; Hermeneutics is a reflection on the
phenomenon of interpretation (Heidegger, Paul Ricoeur and others),
phenomenology.
A second conclusion is that in modern approaches, Hermeneutics is no
longer the interpretation itself, but the science of conditions, of the object, of
the means of interpretation and of practical application. The finality of
interpreting is the comprehension, which has contextuality as the main
mediator. The interpretation is considered as an assembly of rules which
gives arguments for the experience of interpretation and it is adapted to
principles and general rules which Hermeneutics includes, theoretically.
The interpretation is intransitive, of acknowledgement, whose finality
is self- understanding; transitive, whose finality is to be understood and also
normative or dogmatic, such as the theological and the legal one, whose
finality is the establishing of the norms of deeds. Hermeneutics is in the same
time synchronic, when the prevalence of the search of systematic elements is
given, and also diachronic, when the historic character is dominant.

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Hermeneutics examines the correct structure of an interpretation, of

meaning, of context, the order and the connection between different parts,
the identification of critic, rhetoric and logical ways, communication, giving
arguments and the theoretic and practical use 1.
A third conclusion is that in order to achieve the leap of economics into
knowledge, which is necessary, because this science has to evolve in the
same way as the other sciences have done, the hermeneutic step has become
a necessity. This intervention would give more substance to the economic
discourse and more strictness to the explanation and the building of scientific
theories. In Economics, as it happens in social sciences in general, the
natural language is prevalent. This language has to be handled with care
because the imprecision and the ambiguity can become vicious for the
reasoning or for the conclusions. Therefore, Economics, as well as the other
sciences, has to follow the stage of studying the language, of creating a
symbolic language, which has to be integrated into a modern interpretative
theory, based on Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Semiotics. Thus,
Economic Hermeneutics can be useful. We believe that it is time for the
Economic Hermeneutics to build its own principles and rules which will
guide the interpretation, on one hand and their methods of application in the
interpretation of the economic phenomena, on the other hand. All these
principles, concepts and methods will be named the foundation of Economic
Hermeneutics.

The Foundation of Economic Hermeneutics – FEH

The classic writers of the Antiquity defined Hermeneutics as the art of
interpretation which is used in decoding the message beyond the text. From
an economic perspective, this definition can be rephrased in the following
way: the interpretation of the messages given by the economic phenomena
and processes. A first element which leads us to FEH is the signification.
The Stoics named semeiotike the doctrine about signification. In the modern
philosophy, the term was reintroduced as Semiotics (Băileşteanu 2005).

1
The development of these ideas can be found in: Băileşteanu, Gheorghe. 2009.
Hermeneutica şi exprerimentul economic. Timișoara: Mirton; Coordonescu, Ion. Curs de
hermeneutică. http://facultate.regielive.ro; Puente, Mauricio Beuchot. 2007. Hermeneutica
analogică. Bucureşti:Paideia; Heidegger,Martin. 1995. Ontologie. Hermeneutica factităţii,
Bucuresti: Humanitas; Eco,Umberto. 2007. Limitele interpretării. Iaşi: Polirom; Georgescu,
Ştefan. 1978. Epistemologie. Bucureşti: Didactică și Pedagogică.

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In our hermeneutic operation we will use Logical

Semiotics and Economic Semiotics. Logical Semiotics is a part of the
metatheory where people study the language of logic systems from three
perspectives: syntactical (logical syntax), semantic (Logical Semantics)
and pragmatic (Logic Pragmatics) (Enescu 2003). Economic Semiotics is a part
of the metatheory where people study the language of economic systems
following two targets: the extent of the use of signs in economic theory and
practice and in the building of axiomatic systems, able to assure the logic
increase of the economic science. From our point of view, the Economic
Semiotics, as the general theory of the signs, of creating and using signs, of the
signification of the signs, allows the hermeneutic operation an interpretation in
“form” and in “content/ substance”, thus facilitating the logical argumentation,
another FEH which we take into account. By symbol, the people go
from perceiving to understanding, from feeling something to thinking,
from surface to essence, from temporary to permanent. (Wald 1979/42) The
Economic Semiotics which is based on symbols creates the premises for the
development of Economic Hermeneutics, as a science for the interpretation of
the phenomena, for the economic and the theoretic processes. Hermeneutics has
obtained special results in the field of arts, of literature and it is absolutely
necessary wherever we have symbols, signs, as it happens in the economic
research and practice. Interpretation is a toil which consists in the decoding of
the hidden meaning of economic texts, a meaning which is behind different
symbols. Naturally, the economic science includes a scientific field, its object
being the interpretation, namely the economic analysis. But the domain, the
methods and the results which are obtained by this are far from satisfying the
contemporary requirements of a real hermeneutics, because often in the
economic sciences, the symbols, the demonstrated theses are so cryptic that it is
necessary to have their scientific decline, but not based on common thinking,
intuition or chance. As P. Botezatu shows there are several levels of logical
understanding of scientific texts, which we can meet in economic sciences
(Botezatu 1997: 120): extensional or formal understanding, at the level of
symbols only; systematical or contextual understanding, when a criterion of
relativity has to be introduced; structural understanding, which follows the
elements of the analyzed system, the correlations between them and the
meanings which result; intentional understanding, where the notions are
interpreted through the prism of the used arguments, abyssal or hidden
understanding which takes into consideration the psychic aspects of the subject.
Semantics and Hermeneutics and not the economic analysis can, we
say, answer a certain interpretative requirement of the subject, according to
Petre Botezatu’s vision. If we accept Semantics as a basis for an Economic

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Hermeneutics, we will implicitly accept FEH and the tools it uses, such as:
signs- symbols, symbolic tree, semantic trees.
Language is a system of signs. The sign has three dimensions: the sign
for another sign with whom it associates; the sign for the object which it
signifies; a sign for a person who uses it. Thus, we have the necessity for
Semiotics as a general science for the system of signs and their laws of
functioning. Semiotics, in its turn is divided in: syntax: the theory of the
relations between the signs; Semantics: the research of the relations between
the signs and the objects they refer to; Pragmatics: the study of the signs
reported to the subject who uses the language. Generally and fairly, we have
a difference between the signal, which has a communicative purpose and
therefore it is studied by the theory of information and the sign-
symbol, which replaces something (a signifier which is precisely
established), which has a role of signification and it is studied by Semiotics.
Taking into account the structural- semantic features, Ch. Peirce, in the late
19th century, classifies the signs in: icons, which are characterized by an
exterior, a topologic or a geometric resemblance with the signified objects,
with the objects they stand for (for instance, a photograph); indexes, which
show the signified objects through the means of some relations of spatial,
temporal or causative contingence with the designated objects (for instance,
the smoke which indicates the presence of fire); symbols, which do not have
anything in common with the essence or the shape of the signified objects
(scientific language) (Eco 1982: 19).
The language is a system of signs, controlled by certain rules for the
consolidation, the processing and the transmission of information. The
natural language is the common language, the spoken one, while the
symbolical language is the language which uses symbols.
The semantic trees have the role of organizing the phenomena and the
economic processes into a logical structure. A development of this matter
can be found in the following book: Economic Semiotics (Băileşteanu 2005:
115- 137).
Another foundation of Economic Hermeneutics is considered to be
the Logical Economy, with all the elements used by it: judgment, logical
reasoning, tautology, validity, consistence, axioms, and axiomatic systems 2.
We intent to have a hermeneutic intervention from the perspective of
dissipative structures according to Ilya Prigogine’s approach 3, a reason for

2
Additional information on this subject can be found in Băileşteanu, Gheorghe. 2002.
Logică economică. Timişoara: Mirton.
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which we will use other FEH, such as: chance, necessity, determination,
indetermination, unexpected, option. Regarding the interpretation of the
future, we choose the concepts of foresight and visioning. In such a vision,
the projection of the future (the prospective intervention) is done regarding
the redesigned present (which gives a certain tendency), the chosen option
and the successful critical forces which are supposed to appear in the future.
Even if there is only one future, there are several future cycles.
By foresight we interpret or read the future from the perspective of present
tendencies, regarding things from present to the future. The visioning is an
approach from the future to the present, by options and cyclical corrections
which are imposed by the unpredictable and by realities.
From a synthetic approach, these would be the main fundaments of an
Economic Hermeneutics. To these, others are added, which are going to be
taken into account and developed in the present thesis.

Conclusions
Our attempt to put the basis of an Economic hermeneutics began from
the realization that in Economics, in general in the social sciences, the
natural language is prevalent and it has to be handled with care because the
imprecision and the ambiguity can become vicious for the human reasoning
or for conclusions. Therefore, Economics, as well as the other sciences, has
to follow the stage of studying the language, of creating a symbolic
language, able to give a complex and a coherent interpretation of the
processes and the phenomena. For achieving this target, an Economic
Hermeneutics is necessary. This has to be based on other fundaments than on
analysis, but mostly on Semiotics. This happens, because Semiotics is both a
science and a tool for each science and it helps them to analyze their
language and to use it for various axiomatic constructions. The logical
transformation of the economic sciences allows the rebuilding of the theories
as a deductive system, with undefined terms and initial sentences, which will
later assure the deduction of other sentences with their corresponding
theorems.

3
Ilya Prigogine’s theory is presented by Olteanu, Ion. 1982. Dialoguri despre viitor.
Bucureşti: Politică, and further developed in Băileşteanu, Gheorghe, Burz, Răzvan. 2008.
Viitorul, mari provocări şi megatendinţe. Timişoara: Mirton.

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Bibliography
Băileşteanu, Gheorghe. 2002. Logică economică. Timişoara: Mirton.
Băileşteanu, Gheorghe, Burz, Răzvan. 2008. Viitorul, mari provocări şi
megatendinţe. Timişoara: Mirton.
Băileşteanu, Gheorghe. 2009. Hermeneutica şi experimentul economic. Timişoara:
Mirton.
Băileşteanu, Gheorghe. 2005. Semiotică economică. Timişoara: Mirton.
Beuchot, Mauricio Puente. 2007. Hermeneutica analogică. Bucureşti: Paideia.
Botezatu, Petre. 1997. Introducere în logică. Iaşi: Polirom.
Eco,Umberto. 1982. Tratat de semiotică generală. Bucureşti: Ştiinţifică şi
Enciclopedică.
Eco,Umberto. 2007. Limitele interpretării. Iaşi: Polirom.
Enescu, Gheorghe. 2003. Dicţionar de logică. București: Editura Tehnică.
Fee, Gordon, Stuart, Douglas. 1998. Bilbia ca literatură. Cluj Napoca: Logos.
Georgescu, Ştefan. 1978. Epistemologie. Bucureşti: Didactică şi pedagogică.
Heidegger, Martin. 1995. Ontologie. Hermeneutica factităţii. Bucureşti:
Humanitas.
Olteanu, Ion, 1982. Dialoguri despre viitor. Bucureşti: Politică.
Rambu, Nicolae. 1998. Prelegeri de hermeneutică, Bucureşti: Didactică şi
Pedagogică.
Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 1977. Hermeneutik und Kritik. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhkamp.
Clinci, Daniel. 2010. Heidegger și hermeneutica. Available: http://www.revista-
tomis.ro/Gandirea-secolului-al-XX-lea/heidegger-i-
hermeneutica/Imprimare.html (2012-11-28).
Coordonescu, Ion. Curs de hermeneutică. Available: http://facultate.regielive.ro.
Wald, Henri, Dinamica simbolului, in România literară, XII, Nr. 42/1979.

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS

GHEORGHE BĂILEȘTEANU is professor at the West University of Timișoara,
Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Management Department and
conducts PhD. studies in the above mentioned field. Domains of interest: Risks and
Business Evaluation, Business Economics, Economic Theory.

ANDA LAURA LUNGU is professor at the National College „Iulia Hasdeu” in

Lugoj and PhD student at the West University of Timișoara, Faculty of Economics
and Business Administration, Management Specialization. Domains of interest:
Economic Hermeneutics, Economic Phenomena and Processes’ Interpretation
Theory, Symbolisation and Meaning in Economics, natural and symbolic language.

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WHY DO ROMANIANS SPEAK FOREIGN

LANGUAGES SO WELL?
Oana-Roxana Ivan

This work was partially supported by the strategic grant

POSDRU/CPP107/DMI1.5/S/78421, Project ID 78421 (2010), co-financed
by the European Social Fund – Investing in People, within the Sectoral
Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007 – 2013.

Abstract: According to a Eurobarometer survey on attitudes to multi-

language, nearly half of Romanians say they can converse in another
language. English is the foreign language that Romanians speak most,
followed by French, German and Spanish. In recent years Romanians have
progressed in language learning, especially young people, although teachers
recognize that the Romanian education system has to make some changes.
Beyond the statistics and polls, it is obvious that in recent years the language
learning has become important for many Romanians.
Key words: foreign language, mother tongue, school curriculum, level of
English

The use of foreign languages by Romanians

According to a Eurobarometer, less than half of Romanians say they
can have a conversation in another language. English is the foreign language
that Romanians speak most, followed by French, German and Spanish. Over
70 percent of Romanians believe that every European should know at least
one foreign language and 60 percent believe that English should be the best
option. Thus, Carmen Valica, a Radio Romania Actualităţi correspondent,
mentions that according to the Eurobarometer survey on attitudes to multi-
language, nearly half of Romanians say they can converse in another
language, English being the most commonly used. However, only 20 per
cent of Romanians use a foreign language on holiday, compared to the
European average of 50 per cent.
Androulla Vassiliou, Education Commissioner in the European
Committee, explains that although more Europeans believe that speaking a
foreign language is important, aspirations are not translated into reality.
Vassiliou continues:

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“98 per cent of respondents say it would be good for their children’s
future that they know a foreign language. 88 per cent believe speaking
another language than their mother tongue is useful and 84 per cent say that
all Europeans should speak a foreign language. Over 70 per cent of
Europeans believe that we should know even two foreign languages besides
our mother tongue and we believe it, too. Results are therefore encouraging.
But when it comes to facts, it is clear that we are working. Only 54 per cent
of Europeans say they can converse in at least one foreign language and only
one quarter of them speak two languages besides their mother tongue”.
(available at: http://www.romania-
actualitati.ro/the_use_of_foreign_languages_by_romanians_under_eu_avera
ge-42176)
Nonetheless, for Romania the results in this area are below the
European average. 48 per cent of Romanians say they can converse in
another language, 22 per cent say they can do this in two foreign languages.
English is the foreign language that most Romanians speak – 31 per cent,
followed by French – 17 per cent, German and Spanish – 3 per cent. The
study indicates that 8 per cent of Romanian citizens surveyed indicated
Hungarian language as their mother tongue.
Nearly 60 per cent of Romanians believe that English is the most
useful language and about 70 per cent consider that it would be most useful
for their children. Eurobarometer also shows that Romanians mostly use a
foreign language to watch movies or TV programs and listen to radio, since
68 per cent of Romanians, compared to only 44 per cent of Europeans, prefer
subtitled films.
If Eurobarometer results rank us below the European average regarding
the use of language, those involved in education believe that reality is
different. Editor Constanţa Comănici says that in recent years Romanians
have progressed in language learning, especially young people, although
teachers recognize that the Romanian education system has to make some
changes. Beyond the statistics and polls, it is obvious that in recent years the
language learning has become important for many Romanians. Even if in
school the time for teaching foreign languages is limited, situation that exists
in the European Union, the age at which children begin to study a foreign
language has dropped to four or even there years. There are kindergartens
with exclusive program in foreign languages, most in demand being English,
then German or Spanish recently.
Moreover, in secondary school, students study one or two foreign
languages at school and increase the number of hours. Often, the study of a

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foreign language is coupled with private lessons or attending courses

organized by paid various companies.
Top 5 foreign languages taught in Romania
All schools in Romania have foreign language programs. Students
must study at least one language to an advanced level and a second one at a
more basic level. In other cases there are more than two foreign languages
available to study and the student can choose from several. Many schools
also offer bilingual courses.
During the communist period, the main language taught was Russian
and German was the second most common. Nowadays things have changed
and the school curriculum is very different.
According to the results of 2008’s “Key Data on Teaching Languages
at Schools in Europe” published by The Education, Audiovisual and Culture
Executive Agency (EACEA), the top language taught in Romania nowadays
is English. Some fortunate children start to learn it in kindergarten but
usually public schools have a language program which starts in second
grade. The explanation is simple: as we can see on the World Language
Map, English is very popular all around the world and nowadays it is
necessary to have at least a basic command of the language. Furthermore,
according to the cited study, the second most popular language is French and
the third is German. Italian and Spanish are the next most commonly taught
languages.
There is a wide variety of options available and many kids choose a
specialized public school or high school because they want to study a certain
language and they then continue to learn it throughout the curriculum. In the
areas highly populated with minority groups, languages like Hungarian,
Ukrainian, Serbian, Slovak, Czech or Croatian are taught too. They do not
necessarily classify as foreign languages in these circumstances, as they are
available as a result of the structure of society.
Nevertheless, it seems to be the case that all changes in society lead to
changes in the learning process. If you were to ask a young Romanian man
something in English you would definitely get an answer. This is less likely
to happen amongst the older generation of Romanians, as English was not as
much of an integral part of the curriculum when they were in formal
education.

Youth is the hope

Magdalena Bădicescu teaches English at Jose Marti School in
Bucharest and is also part of the evaluation committees at English exams.

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She says that young people’s interest to study foreign languages has
increased in recent years. Bădicescu explains:
“Children and adolescents are very open to foreign languages.
Relevant are the results from Cambridge, also from EFTA examinations and
TEOFL are exceptional in the world. Romanian students have very good
results”. (available at: http://www.romania-
actualitati.ro/the_use_of_foreign_languages_by_romanians_under_eu_avera
ge-42176)
Since 2004 Daniela Pavoni is the leader representative of foreign
language schools in Romania. Specifically, the company organizes courses
and summer camps in foreign schools, colleges and universities where they
advise young people to study in another country. To this, professor
Magdalena Bădicescu explains:
“All the children they send abroad, i.e. over 600 each summer, have an
extraordinarily good level of English, and when compared to other nations
participating in educational programs it seems that other children of the same
age have a much lower level of English. There were cases when groups were
being formed only by Romanians since their level of English was so high
that they could not have been combined with other foreign students”.
(available at: http://www.romania-
actualitati.ro/the_use_of_foreign_languages_by_romanians_under_eu_avera
ge-42176)
Nonetheless, professor Bădicescu considers that certain aspects of the
Romanian educational system could suffer some changes. She explains that
in order to be more productive, foreign language classes should be taught to
smaller groups of students and not to the entire class. Of course this is a
practice in some Romanian schools and it is advisable to be adopted by every
school with the purpose of increasing a positive result regarding foreign
language learning.
All in all, even if surveys show that Romanians compared to other
European citizens do not use foreign languages so often, facts show that
there has been done a step forward in increasing people’s interest in foreign
languages.

Webography
http://www.romania-
actualitati.ro/the_use_of_foreign_languages_by_romanians_under_eu_ average-42176
http://www.lexiophiles.com/english/top-5-foreign-languages-taught-in-romania
http://www.quora.com/Why-do-Romanians-speak-foreign-languages-so-well

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NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Oana-Roxana IVAN is a PhD student in Philology from the University of the
West in Timişoara (Romania). Her thesis centres on the topic of Don Quixote and
Tristram Shandy as modern archetypes of failed masculinity. She has an MA on
American Studies and a BA on English and Spanish Language and Literature in the
University of the West, and a BA on International Relationships and European
Studies in the “Babes-Bolyai” University in Cluj-Napoca (Romania). She is a
qualified teacher of English and Spanish as foreign languages and has been
teaching languages for five years in the state and private educational system. Her
field of interest has allowed her to participate in many national and international
conferences during the last years.

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BOOK REVIEWS

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THE ENGLISH OF TOURISM 1

Oana-Roxana Ivan
PhD student
University of the West Timişoara

Tourism is the single largest international trade in the world which

makes it virtually impossible for anyone’s life to keep unaffected by it. The
English of Tourism is a collection of essays on the use of English in the field
of tourism, edited by Georgeta Raţă, Ioan Petroman and Cornelia Petroman
and addresses a large variety of readers: from hotel and restaurant staff,
lexicographers, professors or researchers, to students, tour-guides, tour-
operators or translators from English-, French-, Romanian-, Croatian- and
Russian-speaking countries.
The editors decided to gather the essays into two chapters according to
their subject of interest; thus a first chapter entitled Tourism contains fifteen
papers written by both Romanian and foreign authors, followed by a slightly
larger chapter of eighteen essays on Hospitality with a similar authorship of
mixed nationality. The book presents a linguistic approach, with a focus on
stylistic features and technical lexis, and offers different points of view by
analysing the use of English language in the field of tourism, like tourism
industry and hospitality, or in some fields related to tourism, such as
gastronomy, hotel, restaurant, toilet, sports and adventure tourism, tourist
industry advertising.
A few essays focus on the impact of tourism on the evolution of the
English language, among which we have Dragana Vuković-Vojnović and
Marija Nićin’s English as a Global Language in the Tourism Industry that
states the importance of English as a global language in the professional
context of the tourism industry, as a result of a questionnaire on the needs
analysis of speaking skill tasks, distributed to tourism employees in Novi
Sad and Belgrade (two main urban tourist destinations in Serbia). Sara
Zamfir, Sara Hauptman and Rachel Tal’s essay on Teaching Lingua Franca:

1
„This work was partially supported by the strategic grant
POSDRU/CPP107/DMI1.5/S/78421, Project ID 78421 (2010), co-financed by the European
Social Fund – Investing in People, within the Sectoral Operational Programme Human
Resources Development 2007 – 2013.”

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The Significance of English for Bedouin High School Students in Israel aims
at examining how the students in the research group (10th graders in Negev
Bedouin schools) understand the function and authority of the English
language, and how they perceive the impact this language would have on
their social, academic and professional future.
Moreover, we have papers that focus on the development of tourism-
related concepts, beginning with Georgeta Raţă’s work on the aspect of
authenticity in tourism, with a paper on Cultural Tourism: Authenticity
Revisited. After a close analysis of the first 24 issues of the Islamic Tourism
Magazine, Cornelia Petroman and Ioan Petroman’s Islamic Tourism brings
forth the key features of this new kind of tourism that satisfies primarily the
Muslim segment of tourists from all over the world and is a novelty for the
Christian world. Malaysian Cuisine: A New Fusion Cuisine is Georgeta
Raţă, Ioan Petroman, Cornelia Petroman and Ioan Trişcău’s attempt to prove
that, despite the independent labels attached to Malaysian cuisine, it goes
beyond being described as cross-cultural/ inter-cultural/ multi-cultural to just
another type of fusion cuisine, as is the case for Romanian cuisine.
The last aspect of the impact of tourism focuses on the linguistic
marketing of a country in Jovana Dimitrijević-Savić, Marta Dimitrijević and
Jelena Danilović’s paper on Serbia Marketed Linguistically where we have a
study of the different ways of previewing the tourist destinations in Serbia,
as they are shaped by their linguascape, which is placed within a particular
setting and a heritage frame. The goal is to see how language is used for
tourist purposes.
This collection of essays also tackles the problem of morphologically
built terms in the field of tourism in communities using one and the same
language (in our case, English). Therefore, Anica Perković and Georgeta
Raţă, in Tourism Terminology in English of New Zealand, discuss
abbreviation resulting from the need for a specialised glossary to understand
the various acronyms that represent over half of the tourism terms used in the
field of tourism in New Zealand, in comparison to notional words and
phrases in general. The English of Eco-Tourism presents Georgeta Raţă,
Cornelia Petroman, Ioan Petroman and Anica Perković’s findings on the
aspect of combination/compounding of the English vocabulary of eco-
tourism such as it is used in Indian tourism sites, based on a common method
of quantitative linguistic analysis of the words combined with eco-. The
practice of derivation is discussed in Georgeta Raţă, Scott Hollifield, Ioan
Petroman and Cornelia Petroman’s study of ‘Definienda’ and ‘Definientia’:
The Case of ‘Travel’, where the purpose of the research is to determine if the
definitions supplied by English language dictionaries meet the requirements

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of a proper definition: setting out the essential attributes of the thing defined
and avoiding circularity, taking the example of travel-related words.
Furthermore, a group of three essays focus on the English of tourism
from a morpho-syntactic point of view. In Georgeta Raţă’s Adjectival
Tourism the purpose of the research is to provide Romanian equivalents for
English adjectival tourism, assuming there are ways to render these terms in
Romanian without having to borrow them from English into Romanian.
Another paper on Special Types of Tourism: Tourism in the Countryside,
brings forth Georgeta Raţă, Anica Perković and Ioan Petroman’s study on
tourism nomenclature nowadays, a field in which the different type of
tourism related to countryside and/or nature interfere or overlap resulting in
noun phrases such as “agrarian tourism, agricultural tourism, agritourism,
country(side) tourism, farm tourism, rural tourism, village tourism”, for
which not even the World Tourism Organisation supplies proper definitions.
The third essay, ‘Travel’ Collocations, represents Georgeta Raţă’s results of
the study of grammar collocations, lexical collocations and special
collocations (clichés or idioms) of the word “travel”.
When it comes to lexicology and lexicography, the authors focus on
three types of study regarding language borrowings. Firstly, there is an essay
on English borrowings in Croatian and Romanian Cuisine by Anica
Perković and Georgeta Raţă, followed by Mircea-Ionuţ Petroman, Cornelia
Petroman and Anica Perković’s English Borrowings in Croatian and
Romanian Drink Names. Secondly, the focus of analysis narrows things
down to the study of English borrowing into Romanian as follows: English
Borrowings in the Romanian Agritourism (Internet Sites), written by
Georgeta Raţă, Cornelia Petroman and Ioan Petroman; English Borrowings
in the Romanian Cuisine by Scott Hollifield, Cornelia Petroman and Ioan
Petroman; English Borrowings in the Romanian of Drinks by Georgeta Raţă,
Scott Hollifield and Ioan Petroman; followed by Georgeta Raţă and Ioan
Petroman’s two essays on English Borrowings in the Romanian of Tourism
(Travel Agencies) and (Sites of Travel Agencies); and last, Anica Perković
and Georgeta Raţă’s The Language of Adventure Tourism: A Contrastive
Approach or Alina-Andreea Dragoescu and Petru-Eugen Mergheş’s The
Language of Sports and Adventure Tourism: An Etymological Approach.
Lastly, the study of language borrowings focuses on foreign insertions into
the English language with two essays on: French Borrowings in the English
Gastronomy (Alina-Andreea Dragoescu) and Russian Borrowings in the
English Cuisine (Georgeta Raţă and Anica Perković).

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Next, the field of semantics is represented by papers in which the focus

is on synonymy, as in the case of Travel (Georgeta Raţă, Scott Hollifield,
Ioan Petroman and Cornelia Petroman), followed by a focus on semantic
fields, with Cornelia Petroman, Ioan Petroman and Snejžana Tolić two
papers on Coffee and Café. The last focus in this category is on semantic
change with the help of Dana Percec and Luiza Caraivan’s Cultural
Tourism: The Case of the Banat Region, where the potential of cultural
tourism is discussed, reaching the conclusion that its versatile nature
contributes substantially to the reconvention of the status, value and impact
of a region (in this case the Banat region).
Enough attention is given to pragmatics issues in papers on: Food-
Related Metaphors in Culinary Tourism Advertising (Nadežda Silaški and
Tatjana Ɖurović),
Cocktails as Metaphors: An Inquiry into Drink Names
(Alina-Andreea Dragoescu) and Alternative Use of Commands in Tourist
Industry Advertising (Tatjana Ɖurović and N
the manifold utility of metaphors in culinary advertising, drink names and
industry advertising in order to encode messages to prospective tourists.
Finally, the domain of etymology is covered by two essays that prove
it is a valuable tool in understanding terminology. Thus, Scott Hollifield,
Ioan Petroman and Cornelia Petroman have written Hotel Terminology: An
Etymological Approach and Anica Perković, Ioan Petroman and Cornelia
Petroman ‘Restaurant’: An Etymological Approach, for a closer analysis of
hotel/restaurant-related words that suggest intriguing developments in both
form and meaning.
In conclusion, the vast variety of aspects discussed in this collection of
essays on The English of Tourism determine the book’s appeal to academic
teaching staff, researchers and students in the field of tourism and of its main
fields (hospitality and food-service), as well as in the field of English for
Specific Purposes (ESP).
Source
Raţă, Georgeta, Petroman, Ioan and Petroman Cornelia (eds).
2012. The English of Tourism. Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars Publishing.

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TREASURES OF THE BANAT REGION BY VIOLETA

TRIPA, ARISTIDA GOLOGAN – A TEXTBOOK
Eliana Popeţi
PhD student
University of the West Timişoara

Many a time we hear in the media that everything related to folklore is

presented metaphorically through terms like: ‘thesaurus’, ‘treasure’, ‘pearls’,
‘gems’, etc. The book entitled Treasures of the Banat by Violeta Tripa and
Aristida Gologan, printed at Europstampa in 2010, explains from the very
beginning that the Banat can be associated with a space where hunters of
such traditional ‘treasures’ will not be disappointed.
With a content rich in specialized information, the authors have created
an ethnography textbook, where they present all the features of the Banat
traditional costume, starting with a short history of the region. Structurally,
the book is traditional, it brings clear and objective information, not being
meant exclusively for the specialized public.
The Banat ethnographic baroque, presenting the component items of
the traditional costume and the Banat folklore ornamental elements, is
described in the introductory study entitled Folk art of Romanians in the
Banat. An admiring attitude towards the Banat ethnographic specificity is
predominant in this part of the book. This form of author exaltation is
extremely discreet textually through the presence of the Banat regional
terms. Nevertheless, the phrase remains objective, the two authors carefully
controlling this aspect: ‘The waist long shirt is called ‘spăcel’ or ‘ciupag’ in
the Banat. In the Făget area villages, Bocşa, Cărbunari, Valea Bistrei, etc.
people also wore, besides the short shirt, the shirt with the hem sewn on the
‘ciupag’ or the long shirt, described in documents dating back to the 18th
century as reaching the ankles’ (p.14). In some cases, the regional terms
substitute an explanation or an addition: ‘The colourful wool yarns in the
warp make up vertical red and green stripes on the edges, while the middle is
dark blue (‘vânăt’) or red, according to the age of the wearer’ (p.16). This
quotation demonstrates the meticulosity with which the two researchers treat
regional features of the Banat. More precisely, the description of the
ethnographic ‘treasures’, is the best moment to inform the readers about
some terms of the Banat sub dialect.

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At the end of the first part, the authors remind the readers what the
most important part of any study about the Banat region is. The conclusions
contain a short summary of what is called ‘multi- and interculturalism’ of the
Banat, the distinctive aspect of this region compared to other Romanian
regions: ‘We can conclude that the ornamental thesaurus inherited through
tradition has been permanently enriched with influences from the south-
eastern European space following the cohabitation with the Serbians, as well
as with other influences from the central and western European space due to
the cohabitation with the German, Hungarian and Slovak populations whose
interest for solar and floral representations is easily identifiable’ (p.27).
The analytical presentation of the collection explains in a didactic
manner the images that illustrate the ‘treasures’ promised in the title. In the
short description of the items we can notice the authors taking distance from
their affiliation to the Banat area, and the ecstasy seen in the first part dissolves
and leaves room for a neutral view: ‘The small rhombuses repeat horizontally,
creating the bond between the big ones. At the edges of this ornamental
register there are two registers of tiny white seams which repeat towards the
extremities of the hems with a blue triangle here and there’ (p.30).
The items are classified according to sex, marital status, age, while the
fabrics, seams, embroideries and commodities are dealt with in a different
part of the book. The authors present the readers with an entire photo album
besides the description of the collection items. The game between the image
and the text fulfils the didactic function necessary to explain the specialized
notions. At the same time, through the ‘unmistakable identity of the Banat
costume’, as the authors call it, a chromatic richness of photos showing the
collection items is created. In a subchapter entitled ‘Festive clothing
ensembles’, the women dressed up for the ‘hora’ (Romanian traditional
dance) or the Banat family have the effect of including the reader
(metaphorically speaking) in the image, so that bringing him/her closer to the
collection should not be doubted.
The book ends with a Collection of photographic documents where the
visual material is enriched through a set of images that do not limit to a simple
aesthetic function, but create the bridge between the book and the places the two
authors gathered the photos from. The appreciations can extend due to the visual
aid in the book and the influence that photography has on the preservation of
memory and interest showed by researchers in this field.
The ‘Banat treasures’ are thus, something else than the ‘treasures’ and
‘pearls’ that the media shows us and we hope that in the future Violeta
Tripa’s collection be richer and the ‘folklore didactics’ represent at least one
curiosity for the readers.

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