Vol. 1, no. 1/2019

Tourism is a dynamic industry, with an important potential to stimulate entrepreneurship and social innovation by creating new jobs. In this way, it contributes to a long-run smart, sustainable and inclusive local development. This paper supports the idea that the tourism industry and mostly the cultural tourism can advance through innovative entrepreneurship, by introducing new methods of production, new delivery methods or simply new products and services that will attract customers. Since innovation involves doing things in a different and better manner, the paper’s goal is to identify the available innovative methods that can be applied to the tourism industry. Special reference is given to the cultural tourism, as part of the creative and cultural industries. The paper includes a series of statistical data regarding tourism in the European Union and an analysis of the impact on the customer experience and local economy development.

Students’ perception regarding a career in sales has long been studied, especially in the US, but with fewer studies in Europe. There is less research in Romania. The present paper questions students from five faculties within the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, the number of valid answers being 167. The main research results how that although they do not have a negative perception on the field, as it was generally indicated by the previous studies carried out in the Anglo-Saxon countries, students are not very attracted to a career in sales as a firs professional option. The situation changes to some extent if there is a firm job offer that many more would accept. Another important aspect is the influence of socio-demographic variables on the decision to pursue a career in sales, with particular regard to differences between boys and girls and income levels. Although in general, they believe that the subjects studied in college would be of use for them in order to work in sales, most of the students do not intend to make this professional choice. The overall conclusion of the study is that students from Bucharest University of Economic Studies do not have a deepened knowledge of the field, and the lack of interest in a sales job is the result of the unawareness of this field rather than a negative perception.

The competitive advantage of a company brings together the unique elements and attributes that it owns and exploits them in order to set apart significantly from its competitors. Advantage benefit sources are multiple, and a combination thereof leads to a series of unlimited opportunities for strengths diversification against the competitors. One of the most valuable sources is the employees, whose contribution is vital to gaining competitive strengths. This paper aims to investigate the perception of the employees of the luxury hotels in Bucharest regarding their own contribution to the creation of the competitive advantage. The research was conducted using a questionnaire applied to people with work experience in 4- or 5-star hotels in the capital city, regardless of the position held, and was based on three main objectives. The first set goal was aimed to test the hypothesis according to which employees are the most important source of competitive advantage, but this was not fully confirmed by the respondents. The second hypothesis refers to the fact that all positions held within a luxury hotel can contribute to the creation of the competitive advantage, which is unanimously confirmed by the interviewees. The third objective of the research was to discover how the employees of the luxury hotels in Bucharest assess their own contribution to the creation of the competitive advantage within the hotel where they work; The conclusion for the proposed objective was that they assess on average their own contribution with a grade of 8 out of 10. The implications of this article may be found in other researches that could, for example, address the competitive advantages of luxury hotels in other cities worldwide, compared to those in Bucharest or the differences between luxury hotels in Bucharest and those located in other large cities in Romania, in terms of competitive advantage.

This paper aims to identify the most used ways to obtain the competitive advantage for travel agencies. Thus, following the study of the literature from the specific databases, and also following the application of a quantitative research, there were obtained information regarding the today’s trend of the ways to overtake the rivalry in the field, as they are seen by the personnel employed in different types of travel agencies in Bucharest. Based on these, there may be noticed actual trends regarding the tackle of the travel agencies in order to obtain a market share as large as possible, and to secure the loyalty of the customers.