Rentakub: How a local tourism business weathers the pandemic, aiming to become a "Romanian Airbnb"

In a travel and tourism sector that took the hit from the coronavirus pandemic, one Romanian entrepreneur saw increased demand for its newly opened accommodation network of houses located in remote areas, accessible in a self-service system.

A passion for tourism and the experience in the construction sector stood behind Costi Zărnescu’s decision to set up the Rentakub network, offering wooden houses located in remote parts of the country, available for rent in a self-service system, through a dedicated platform. The network targets tourists as well as entrepreneurs interested in starting a tourism business by purchasing such houses and offering them for rent.

It is not his first experience in the tourism sector, having started in 2003 a travel agency targeting the French market, and those interested in eco-tourism in particular. “The tourism business was my passion in the years 2000. I can’t say how it started,” Zărnescu told Romania-Insider.com. Later, the idea of the wooden houses emerged, and he co-founded EcoKit, a maker of the wooden homes, a business from which he made an exit last year. “Around 2014-2015, we decided to build a line of holiday homes for rent, where we would take our families and friends, and then spread them throughout Romania. This is how Rentakub appeared.”

“We were always focused on a more atypical, Nordic-looking design; the EcoKit products are similar, more design-oriented. And we created these cube-shaped houses and started selling them to others who wanted to purchase and rent them,” he explains.

The investment to start the project spread over several years, since 2018, amounts to EUR 250,000, including the promotion and the holiday village in Slănic Moldova, developed to show how the Rentakub concept works.

Called La Kuburi, the holiday village in Slănic Moldova has six houses, which can be rented by both tourists and potential partners who want to test the concept. The houses are of different sizes, but each has a yard of between 100 and 200 sqm, lined up by a thuja fence. The guests rent the entire home, and they receive an access code to the property the day before arrival. There’s no reception and there is no one to check them in; there is a shadow staff, doing the cleaning and making sure that things go well, but nobody bothers tourists, he explains.

La Kuburi had an occupancy rate for the summer months of around 98%. In September it was 93%, and in October it was 70%. “It has exceeded our expectations. We opened in February, but the pandemic stopped us, and then we restarted in June; there is still high demand over the weekends,” Zărnescu says.

The businessman plans to expand the village in spring by adding other houses, a shared hall, and a pool. “We want to add five more cubes in spring, but bigger models, with more land around them so it would be even more comfortable for tourists.”