Romania to Spend €7 Million to Promote Tourism

News about Romania tourism from today:

In the following years Romania would like to increase by at least 5 per cent the number of tourists from Western Europe and North America, so it will invest EUR 7 M in promoting tourism through a new marketing program, Ovidiu Silaghi, the Minister of SMEs, Commerce and Tourism, has announced yesterday at the end of a Government meeting. The first step will consist of modifying the tourism brand. ‘Romania has other things to show apart from Dracula Land’ Silaghi stated. The Minister pointed out that the situation of the EUR 1.5 M advertisements that were never aired will no longer be repeated. ‘We found out about that outrage when we were asked to supplement the budget by 60 per cent’ Silaghi explained. The Minister added that a series of partnerships for attracting tourists will be initiated, one of them being created in Venice where Romania has become the official partner of the Carnival of Venice.

The number of arrivals in the accommodation structures reached 6.97 M, of which 5.4 M, i.e. 77.8 per cent, are Romanian clients, and the remaining 12.2 per cent are foreigners, informs the National Institute of Statistics (INS). The weight of the Romanian and foreign tourists in the total visitors remained unchanged during the analyzed period, the number of foreign tourists growing over 12 per cent, while that of the Romanians 12.1 per cent. In 2007, there were 20.59 M nights spent in hotels, up 8.4 per cent over 2006. The nights spent in accommodation structures by the Romanian tourists represented 82.6 per cent of the total, while the foreign tourists represented 17.4 per cent of the total number of nights spent in accommodation structures. The growth of the number of nights spent in accommodation structures was registered in the case of the hotels, youth hostels, ships, rural and urban tourist boarding houses. An important fall compared to 2006 was registered in the case of school and pre-school pupil camps, bungalows.

The number of foreign visitors at the border increased 27.9 per cent, to 7.72 M persons, most of them coming from European countries (94.4 per cent). 62.3 per cent of the total visitors registered at the border came from EU countries.

The departures of the Romanian visitors abroad registered at the border check points, increased 23.3 per cent, to 10.97 M. The road transport means were the most used by the Romanians to travel abroad (79.8 per cent of the total number of departures).

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