Opportunities and Threats for Romania as a Tourist Destination after the World Economic Crisis

摘要

Through the geopolitical position that it holds within the continent, Romania enjoys a great advantage over competing countries. Romania is located at the crossroads of the most important trade routes of the continent: midway between the northern and southern Europe, and on the road linking Western Europe to Asia. This advantage can be developed in terms of transit tourism, but also in terms of relaxation tourism due to the relatively small distances between Romania and the western countries. The imperativeness of the road infrastructure development at the western standard will reduce the time spent on the road, given that road trips have the largest share of transport preferences of foreign tourists arriving in Romania. If one mentions the possibility of the future oil and gas pipe from the Caspian Sea to transit Romania, the country's geopolitical importance in the Central European area is more and more increased. However, Romania has ceased to be an attractive tourist destination because of the competition, limited offers, inadequate infrastructure and services, according to the tourism development strategy published by the Romanian National Tourism Authority (NTA). According to the strategy, the Romanian tourism offer faces more problems. All types of programs offered by Romania encounter fierce competition on Western European markets, while the competing destinations offer a wide range of facilities for all the tourists. Also, the Romanian offer is relatively limited, confined to a few resorts, and within these to only a few hotels. The services are inferior to those of the competing destinations such as Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece and Cyprus, while entertainment does not match the offer of other destinations. To these problems we can add the inadequate road and technical infrastructure, lack of superior hotels in major cities and in tourist resorts of international interest. In terms of quality-price ratio, Romania has ceased to be an attractive tourist market.