The importance of sports and leisure infrastructure in generating sports tourism within Romanian II status urban areas. Case study: the city of Cluj Napoca

Abstract

Sports and leisure infrastructure within urban centres represents part of the tourism infrastructure, together with the communication ways, accommodation establishments, restaurants, bars, pubs, summer gardens, conference centres, exhibitions and fairs; their main part is to support the tourism act. Sports and leisure infrastructure has two relevant aspects: it acts as a base for any sports event that gathers not only viewers but also competitors and it represents an element that has great architectural value (such as stadiums). When it comes to smaller cities such as Cluj-Napoca, the importance of sports and leisure infrastructure might be at first minimized, but well capitalized and promoted in order to become a generator of tourism flows.