Entrepreneurship or Resources for a Better Tourism? A K Nearest Neighbors and Decision Tree Dynamic Analysis for Romania

Abstract

Tourism is one of the growing sectors worldwide in the last decade and one of the most affected industries after COVID-19 pandemic. Tourism is a very complex sector of the economy and depends on a very wide range of factors including tourism attractions, tourism resources but also by the entrepreneurship actions in the destinations. The aim of the paper is to find out, by using a complex statistical methodology, if the level of tourism indicators (turnover, arrivals, overnight stays) has changed after ten years (2020/2010), due to the entrepreneurial actions and/or based on specific touristic resources (natural resources and built heritages/historical monuments). A multi-methods approach was applied: explore outliers’ analysis, Kruskal–Wallis test, Student t test, Pearson correlations, machine learning methods (K Nearest neighbors analysis and decision tree). Our results have both theoretical and practical contribution, fill a gap in the scientific literature, offer important outputs for all Romanian stakeholders and worldwide, especially in the actual conditions which marked a total reconsideration and rethinking of tourism after COVID-19 pandemic.