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Crisis effects upon Romanian tourism

Under current crisis conditions, Romanian tourism is to register a stagnation, including on the business travel segment, but competition will be boosted and the quality of services will help to differentiate operators' offers, Lucia Morariu, president of travel agency Eximtur is quoted as saying by Financiarul daily.

'The problems generated by the crisis will trigger a fierce competition on this market and good quality services will make the difference between the agencies and the hotels. But we must understand that you cannot provide quality for free and, many times, very cheap products are not quality ones', said Lucia Morariu.

She appreciated that the vacations market will show stagnation and local tourist destinations look more attractive at the moment for Romanians, products on foreign destinations being put on sale just recently.

In Lucia Morariu's opinion, the segment of events will be strongly affected at least in the first half of 2009 because the majority of corporations severely cut their travel budgets. Although these aspects have become obvious since October, November, December 2008 still.

In their turn, operators indicate the business travel zone as the most affected segment this year because it is directly linked to the financial and economic crisis and to the reduction of the specific budgets by client companies. An indicator reflecting this move is the volume reduction of air tickets sales in Jan. - Feb. 2009, by more than 20 percent, mainly caused by a reduced traffic at corporate level.

Despite all these, Lucia Morariu says some revival is likely, when the companies dealing with the state institutions restart their activity as a result of budgets approval.

Referring to the outgoings, Eximtur representative says that she expects a rise in demand for vacations in neighboring countries, with moderate prices and own transport means, at the expense of air travel. Turkey, Greece, as well as Croatia, Bulgaria and Hungary will remain preferred destinations by Romanians.

As well, demand for vacations abroad with charter flights, at moderate prices, has the chance to stay at an acceptable level, especially Turkey, Spain, Greek islands, but only in case the euro/leu exchange rate remains stable.

Referring to the current economic context influence upon Eximtur business, Lucia Morariu underlines that a diversified activity structure, as well as of the markets the agency operates on offer the opportunity to offset eventual declines on a market with growth on another, or of a department losses with gains on another.

'At this moment, it is premature to come up with a forecast, but I think that vacations in the country, tourism in Romania, with Romanians, will be the winning card for us this year', underscored Eximtur president.

For 2009, the company stakes on a sales volume of 160 million lei (some 40 million euros), of which 45 million lei (some 11.25 million euros) derived from the domestic market, 45 million lei from tourism abroad (some 11.25 million euros) and 65 million lei (some 16.25 million euros) from air tickets sale.

This year, the company will be focused on tourism in Romania, on-line sales and Travel agents' school in order to train specialized work force, both for travel agencies and hospitality and restaurant businesses.

 

Sursa: http://www.rompress.ro

Tags: million crisis lucia travel tourism air euro