Health resorts compete with seaside

Modernisation of hotels and restoration of treatment facilities in health resorts is focusing travel agency attention on health tourism in 2005. Until now, the seaside has been the main attraction on the domestic market. As a result of this change in focus, travel agencies are proposing a change to the system whereby accommodation is booked in health resorts, allowing for a boost in sales. (Until now, reservations were made by individual customers instead of being contracted by tour operators). “One of Eximtur’s main goals for 2005 is to boost sales of health and mountain tourism packages by about 50%. Last year this accounted for some 10% of our domestic tourism sales, which amounted to 200bn ROL (about 5 million euros), which is very little. There has been a lot investment in the health and mountain resorts in Romania in recent years and I believe they (the resorts) will become an increasingly common feature of travel agency programmes,” Morariu said. ZF