Romanian tourism lacks strategies

The manager of Best Western hotel company, Malin Malineanu, says Romanian tourism needs a coherent strategy to lure visitors from abroad, not only for business purposes, but also for leisure, during holidays.

“Strategy is a highly interesting word. It is never uttered in Romanian tourism by those who should be devising strategies,” said the Best Western manager. According to Malineanu, Best Western”s strategy was launched by taking over a big hotel in Bucharest and then progressed with smaller units, outside Bucharest.

“We started by affiliating a major hotel in the capital city because, in our opinion, Bucharest is the key point for Romania.

“It is here that we”ve sealed this successful, I believe, partnership with Parc hotel,” explains Malineanu.

He says this allows the company to move forward to other, smaller cities, where the targets are 30 to 40-room hotels, and also to leisure areas.

“Sometimes, strategies are validated by reality, sometimes they aren”t. Over the last few years, our strategy has been validated,” Malineanu also said.

Unlike most international hotel chains that entered Romania, Best Western is not pursuing the affiliation of hotels only in business areas, but has also added units from leisure locations.

According to Malineanu, Romanian hotels are still reluctant to work under the brand of an international company.

“The main barrier is the fear of the beginning, namely the fear of knowing. Should this be overcome, I believe the following steps would be much easier for many hotels. Yet, there is this primordial fear,” Malineanu added. Best Western has affiliates in Bucharest (Best Western Parc), Gura Humorului (Best Western Bucovina-Club de munte), Arad (Central Hotel), Cluj-Napoca (Topaz Hotel), Covasna (Balvanyos), Mamaia (Savoy Hotel) and Timisoara (Best Western Ambasador).

“We are not present in the entire country and we are not present in many places where we would like to be. We”d like to have a presence in Iasi, Brasov and Sibiu. We will probably get there. Sibiu and Brasov are two cities where talks have been long underway,” specifies Malinescu. andreea.groenendijk@zf.ro