Minister: Romania’s promotion offices abroad to reopen by year-end

Romania’s promotion offices abroad will reopen by the end of the year, tourism minister Bogdan Trif said, Agerpres reported.

“By the end of the year, we aim, and we will definitely succeed, to re-establish the foreign promotion offices. It is important to have these foreign promotion offices, so that the staff working there have direct connections with operators. […] We want to reopen them as soon as possible. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel, because all countries with advanced tourism have these foreign promotion offices,” Trif said.

The minister also said the tourism promotion video launched in March, and translated into 16 languages, cost some EUR 30,000 to make.

“We plant to promote the tourist attractions of Romania internationally. This year we have a budget that allows us to go into foreign markets,” the minister said.

Trif explained that the current national tourism logo needs to be in place until 2020.

“Unfortunately, until 2020 we cannot give it up because it was a project where we used European funds; if we dropped the leaf symbol, we would have to give all the money back,” the minister said.

He said a new logo could be designed with the involvement of students. “We can have a competition. We need not spend too much to make some beautiful things,” he said.

The minister also explained that holiday vouchers contributed significantly to the tourist traffic in the country.

“They did a study asking us not to drop these vouchers because they were the main engine for the tourism development in 2018. We are talking about RON 1,450 (EUR 304) granted to some 1.2 million Romanians. Besides being a social measure, it was an economic one, to help the tourism sector. The tourism sector is some 95% private so all the money went into the country’s private sector,” Trif said, quoted by Agerpres.

(Photo: Ministerul Turismului Facebook Page)