Agritourism is a complex activity, a chance maybe today to ensure both human health and the “health” of the environment and rural settlements in order to achieve a most wanted desideratum, the sustainability of the rural environment. The idea of this paper starts from the trend of the current period, meaning the strong emphasis on natural, organic, bio, in all human activities, health and environment, in a word, sustainability. The necessity of implementing the sustainability of activities, health and environment in rural areas, taking into account the agritourism field, was a subject pursued in the study, taking as area of study the mountainous rural environment, the reason of this choice deriving from the fact that the mountain area offers great opportunities for agritourism development, the practice of which is even necessary in the current period. The sustainability of agritourism on rural health and environment cannot be dissociated from the economic, social and cultural life of the community in which it manifests itself, and has a multiplier effect on all the domains with which it interacts. So the purpose of the paper is to follow the development of the agritourism field and, based on some present information, to make a future forecast for some specific indicators, to highlight the representative aspects related to the development and capitalization of guesthouses from a rural mountain environment through agritourism and to come up with a forecast for future transformations that need to take place in the studied area in order to support the sustainable development of the human environment through agritourism.

Sustainability has become a priority in the last decades. If we consider rural regions, agritourism, an activity strongly related to local communities, represents an opportunity to ensure the sustainability of rural settlements and of the environment, and at the same time an innovative and diversifying possibility for the economic support of rural settlements. Many studies have shown that the sustainability trend of the current period can be achieved by combining rural and local resources and traditional products specific to the rural regions with tourist activities, the challenge being the revitalization of rural economy. A large number of Romanian mountain rural regions can provide opportunities for sustaining agritourism activity; some of them may succeed to capitalize on the niche characteristic of agritourism, and through appropriate and effective strategies to move from the pioneering stage to an economically and socially valuable chance for improving the living conditions from rural area and finally to ensure sustainable development of rural communities. This paper begins from the importance of agritourism for rural regions. It aims at identifying the current situation of the agritourism activity in three regions and at developing proposals that are based strictly on the specific needs of the regions. In our opinion, the implementation of these specific actions would represent future challenges and at the same time ways of supporting the sustainable development of agritourism activities and of local settlements.

The debates regarding sustaining the rural world by improving the quality of life are numerous; one of the proposals being agritourism activity. This activity can be a “smart chance” for the sustainability of the mountain rural environment, because it has a multiplier effect on some important parts of economic and social life of the community. For instance, it can be an ally of agriculture, ensuring a diversification alternative for farms, an alternative for local guesthouses to capitalize their own local products, while ensuring the opportunity to obtain additional/complementary income, a possibility of adjusting the depopulation phenomenon and the abandonment of old houses and lands, at the same time offering a pleasant activity/alternative, especially for young people. In this context, the purpose followed in the paper is oriented through the transposition of agritourism activity into a “smart chance” for ensuring rural mountain sustainability. Being simultaneously an innovative and diversifying alternative, it is an actual one that starts from the study of two areas which are similar in terms of tourist potential. However, the approach is a different one, especially regarding the combination of agricultural resources with those specific to the rural way of life, and it also follows a different degree of development. Our scientific approach aims to present some aspects from the two areas, to achieve a general image of tourism potential, to identify how the agritourism activity is seen by those directly involved in its implementation, to point out some aspects due to which agritourism activity can be considered as a “smart chance” while bringing multiple benefits, and to ensure the sustainability of rural mountain areas by playing a vital role in the transition towards a more sustainable future.

The popularity of rural areas and especially the mountainous ones, as a possibility to spend the vacation has increased in most countries. Almost all mountain areas can provide great opportunities for the development of various forms of rural tourism, there being many examples according to which many mountain areas, through appropriate and effective strategies of capitalizing the resources through the forms of rural tourism, start from the pioneer stage to a real valuable alternative in socio-economic terms for the rural area. One of the concepts that are increasingly used is the “tourist village”, its main issue, consisting in the return of the investment, an aspect that we will discuss in this paper. The paper presents an analysis of the way in which the occupancy degree affects the period of amortization of the initial investment. Concretely, in the case of the medium-sized tourist village, the minimum occupancy degree for the amortization of the initial investment, starts from about 25% for the investment without a loan, but subsidy in proportion of 50% and reaches at about 85% in the case of an investment with loan, for a period of 10 years, without advance or subsidy and with an interest of 7%. Initial investments were established for a holiday village in the Romanian countryside.

The necessity of entrepreneurship in rural area is an actual one. A smart entrepreneurial variant of contemporary village’s development could be “the smart tourist village”, to capitalize rural resources. Thus, in this research we come to a variant of contemporary village’s development, respectively “smart tourist village”, which is the basic idea of the work. To demonstrate that the notion of “smart tourist village” can be a future idea of sustainable rural entrepreneurship the steps undertaken were: the identification of the representative aspects of the villages from Maramures and of their specific resources presentation of the specific aspects; the study also made a quantitative presentation of the rural tourism infrastructure from Maramures by localities; and identifies the perception and “vision” of tourists and owners of tourist structures about Maramures tourist village as an innovative solution with benefits for tourists and locals. The information collected by using the method of qualitative case study served to sketch a possible projection such as “smart tourist village” taking into account the possible costs, return on investment, possible design and advantages.

In our days consumers are interested and visibly reoriented towards natural/local/organic products. Starting from this specificity, the development of rural tourism can come as a possible sustainable response to be implemented in many of the rural areas, such an example being the Moieciu area subject to our analysis. The main objective of this paper is to achieve an analysis of rural tourism activity’s development stage from Moieciu area, from the tourist’s perspective, using case study method and as “main tool of research” the questionnaire. Thus, several research-oriented goals followed are: establishing the arguments for practicing tourism in rural areas; describing the development of Bran-Moieciu area from economic, agricultural and tourist point of view; identifying the reasons for which Moieciu area is a place where tourism can ensure sustainable development. The measure of appreciation of this area by the tourist is analyzed through a face-to-face questionnaire, having as purpose to identify: the capitalization level of local resources through rural tourism activities; the extent to which local resources are present in the product consumed by tourists; the satisfaction degree and expectations regarding the tourist product; the connection between tourism and area development in terms of satisfaction. Based on the information obtained some proposals/possible directions will be proposed to transform the area into “a possible model of sustainable rural tourism development”.