With a striking manifestation for at least 50 years the tourism industry identifies itself in our country as an independent economic field. Generally speaking, the importance and development of tourism within the national economic activities represent the result of preoccupations in applying the policies and strategies specific to marketing. Starting from the authors’ idea that the tourism industry counts among those industries that need both investments (in infrastructure, environment etc.) and strategic (and implicitly, marketing) planning permanently adapted to the real conditions, this paper aims to perform a retrospective and equally a parallel between the effects of marketing application within the tourism activities in our country, the periods taken into consideration for the purpose of analysis being separated by the time when the communist regime was replaced in Romania. Within this approach, the periods before and after 1990 shall be considered.