Industrial Heritage as a Tourist Attraction. Case Study Unirea Salt Mine (Romania)

Industrial heritage assets represent cultural heritage objectives that have multiple values (historical, technological, architectural, cultural, and social). The purpose of this study is to analyze the degree of interest of tourists to visit the Unirea salt mine in the town of Slănic Prahova (Romania) as an industrial heritage attraction. To develop the study, the authors applied a questionnaire to a number of 348 Romanian tourists with the aim of evaluating the degree of knowledge of the tourists regarding the mining heritage and the degree of interest in (re)visiting the Unirea salt mine. The main results of the study reflect the fact that there is a low share of tourists (16%) who visited the Unirea mine as an industrial heritage attraction. The main conclusion of this study is that, due to the complexity of the Unirea mine as an industrial heritage attraction, it requires better tourism exploitation to attract more visitors.