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

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.