Romanian tourism on the web

The first online tourism bourse in the Romanian virtual space, which is also the official site of the National Association of Travel Agencies in Romania (ANAT), is planning to become an intermediary both between travel agencies and the clients and between the businesspeople interested in tourism.

The site is available at www.romaniantourism.ro and is designed and managed by Romanian Tourism company, with ANAT as one of the shareholders. The site displays tourism information and the offers of tourism agencies, as well as categories such as “assets sale” and “jobs.”

“From this point of view, www.romaniantourism.ro plans to fill a gap in the actual media, as Romanian tourism has a rather low access to the Internet, namely the international access to information is quite low now,” Eugen Iacob, Romanian Tourism manager, told Ziarul Financiar.

The site’s database includes 90 agencies for the time being and only 35-40 of them posted offers, Iacob said.

“I hope that the others will soon become aware of the great potential of the virtual community in this field,” as “the site intends to be the best sales representative for the agencies and for the other tourism service providers,” ANAT chairman Cornel Gaina said.

Only the travel agencies that are ANAT members may post offers for the time being, but officials say they hope to attract both travel agencies that are not ANAT members and the hotels, restaurants and carriers willing to post their own offers.

A larger database will help both the portal, which will cash more money, and the “consumers of tourism services,” as they will be able to choose between the offers provided by the agencies and those provided by the suppliers themselves.

“www.romaniantourism is, on one hand, an opportunity for the travel agents to enhance the value of their offers and, on the other hand, an excellent opportunity for the tourists to find the offers meeting their tastes and needs. It is quite simple, as the agencies have their own system of offer management, while several easy-to-use search engines are available for the visitors, helping them to reach the target they want.”

In addition, the site has a database comprising more than 10,000 tourism Internet addresses (hotels, villas, lodgings, chalets, restaurants, and embassies).