In this thesis, the way in which rural tourism developed, since the fall of communism inRomania in 1989 until 2020 is explored. The strategies in form of development plans,programs and legislation adopted by Romania, the changes stakeholders in the public andin the private sector went through in order to adapt the rural tourism sector to capitalism andhow this are reflected in evolution of tourism accommodation and tourists numbers areanalysed on a macro level for the whole of Romania and then at a micro level by usingMaramures County, as a study case. However, the focus and the core aim of this study isrural tourism development in Maramures county, one of the representative traditionalregions of the country. Here, the rural tourism development is analysed based on a generalframework then semi-structured interviews are employed as the main method for datacollection. The results of the analysis show the perception that different stakeholders haveregarding how tourism developed in their area and under what conditions. Overall, based onthe analysis results, it can be concluded that in Maramures tourism development is notsatisfactory, but progress has been made, especially since the infrastructure in mostcommunes is or has been modernized.