Regional economic development supported by sustainable tourism

The subject of sustainable tourism has been increasingly discussed in recent years because the complex connection between the environment and the economy has been acknowledged, and there is a pressing need for the integration of these two components, which means the foundation on the premises of a deep and lasting development, which generates a positive impact on society as a whole. According to the specialized literature, the paradigms in the tourism industry are changing. This shows what are the challenges facing the tourism sector today and requires special attention from the authorities and the economic agents involved, who must guide this industry towards a sustainable development in the future.Taking these findings as a starting point, we proposed for our research to highlight, in the first part, the role of tourism on the regional development and secondly the measurement of the impact of tourism, practiced intensively and extensively, on the environmental factors through a series of qualitative and quantitative indicators, highlighted the fact that the damage of the environment over time implicitly leads to the damage of the economic growth. The results of the research allowed us to formulate, in the conclusions part, several directions of action to be followed by regions with a well-developed economy as well as less developed ones, in order to boost tourism activity in the new context of respecting the environmental factor.