Tourism is perceived as an appropriate solution for pursuing sustainable economic growth due to its main characteristics. In the context of sustainable tourism, gamification can act as an interface between tourists (clients), organisations (companies, NGOs, public institutions) and community, an interface built in a responsible and ethical way. The main objective of this study is to identify gamification techniques and applications used by organisations in the hospitality and tourism industry to improve their sustainable activities. The first part of the paper examines the relationship between gamification and sustainability, highlighting the links between these two concepts. The second part identifies success stories of gamification applied in hospitality and tourism and reviews gamification benefits by analysing the relationship between tourism organisations and three main tourism stakeholders: tourists, tourism employees and local community. The analysis is made in connection with the main pillars of sustainability: economic, social and environmental. This study is positioning the role of gamification in the tourism and hospitality industry and further, into the larger context of sustainable development.

Cultural events and festivals can have a significant and important influence on the development of local communities. Their utilization of the endogenous resources of an area means that these events, most often, have a positive impact on the local economy. Quite consequentially, they may also extend the socio-cultural opportunities of local citizens. However, their utilization of time and space does raise concerns regarding environmental impact. Therefore, it is imperative that stakeholders study their net impact on a region. This present paper examines the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental impact of the Transilvania International Film Festival (TIFF). With a history of 15 editions, the festival gathers, year by year, an increasing number of people in Cluj-Napoca. The growth of the event has had unmistakable and important effects on the city. The purpose of the paper is to analyze resident participants’ perceptions on economic, socio-cultural, and environmental effects. To reach this goal, an exploratory and descriptive research was conducted. Both primary and secondary data were used in the analysis, the questionnaire being the main tool used for collecting data about participants’ perceptions. The results emphasize the positive effects at the socio-cultural level. The festival provides multiple possibilities to spend free time in a pleasant way, it sustains the development of cultural life, and it improves the educational and the cultural level of community. Moreover, the festival does not influence, in a negative manner, the moral principles of the society and it does not generate an increase in crime rate. From the economic point of view, the festival has the capacity to attract investments and additional revenues for the local government, it sustains the development of the city infrastructure, and it creates opportunities for residents to develop new economic activities. Lastly, from the environmental point of view, the festival sustains the improvement of environmental issues, it does not generate important traffic problems, and it does not deteriorate touristic resources.

Nowadays, the role of the sharing economy in tourism increases, the number of people involved as guests or hosts rising day by day. This dynamic generates a viable alternative to the traditional services, allowing tourists to customise their trips and enrich their experiences. This paper focuses on accommodation services, investigating the factors influencing the prices established by Airbnb hosts. Using structural equation modelling, the authors analyse the influence of different categories of factors (listing’s characteristics, hosts’ involvement, listing’s reputation, listing’s location, and rental policies) on the average daily rate. The results emphasise that the hosts establish the listing’s price based on listing’s characteristics and on their involvement – the owners managing only one listing and the ones charging a security deposit value more their involvement, while the other hosts focus more on the listings’ characteristics. The location of the listing counts for experienced owners, while for opportunist owners it has no importance. The listings’ reputation has a negative impact on the price, contrary to the conclusions achieved in other studies, an aspect that supports the idea that price determinants differ across regions.

In a world of sustainable development, affected by a certain short-term liquidity distress, the economic actors are facing uncertainty since inadequate resource management and decision making can have significant effects over a country’s future economic and societal development. Therefore, the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process consider economic forecasts, based on variables that factor in recent developments, to aid them in the aforementioned process. If they did not, they would not have a greater understanding of a country’s performance indicators. Using past data, a set of analyses are performed, and economic models are built, with the scope of probabilistically determining Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The main objectives of this paper are thus, to assess Romania’s development since joining the European Union (EU) and provide a long-term macroeconomic projection, together with a comparison between the forecasted data and the country’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in order to realistically estimate their achievability. Furthermore, a set of scenarios have been built that aim at creating a clearer perspective of how the recent global pandemic might affect Romania. The data sets have been taken from Eurostat, the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, European Commission, National Bank of Romania and the National Institute of Statistics; and a set of statistical tools have been used to fulfill the previously stated objectives, namely; Auto Regressive Moving Average (ARMA) for the short-term forecasts and Variable Autoregression (VAR) for the long-term models. The main results suggest a negative GDP growth of 4.95% for 2020 followed by a strong rebound in 2021. However, this figure will drastically be affected by how well or poorly the situation is managed. The European Commission anticipates a downturn of 6% in 2020 and a rebound 4.2% in the following year. This paper includes a sensitivity analysis as well, that attempts to eliminate potential forecasting biases. JEL Classification: E17, C53

The present paper investigates the point of intersection between wine tourism and urban tourism in 87 Romanian small towns. The presence of vineyards and wine-incentives represent distinctive features with the potential to become (niche) tourism attractions, therefore having the capacity to provide a competitive edge for these towns in a fierce and aggressive tourism market. For the current investigation, the research question is: do the wine-attractions related to these localities influence the tourist accommodation facilities and arrivals and therefore their position as wine tourism destinations? The research results show, with painful clarity, that the Romanian municipalities and towns related to wine-attractions do not use this differentiating feature in order to raise their profile as wine tourism destinations. Having wine-related attractions at their core, Romanian smaller urban localities could benefit from potential factors to regenerate their economic and social conditions through tourism. Most of them are presently ignoring this competitive advantage, seeming to have no dreams to become wine tourism destinations. Article History: Received: Mai 27, 2025; Reviewed: October 24, 2025; Accepted: December 2, 2025; Available online: December 18, 2025. JEL classification: L83, Z32