Romania's Tourism Fair

The spring edition of Romania's Tourism Fair was held over February 18 and February 21. It was a special edition, held exclusively online, enabling exhibitors to display their holiday offers for the most attractive domestic destinations. Also, online visitors of the fair had the opportunity to compare accommodation and transport fees straight on the platform, which also included gadget offers and holiday accessories.

Delia Botan is Romexpo marketing manager. She gave us details about the success of Romania's Tourism Fair's first online edition.

Delia Botan:

"The Romanians have a tremendous urge to explore the world, and that was obvious at the virtual version of Romania's Tourism Fair. Ten thousand people registered for this edition and made roughly 32,000 visits on the platform, for the four days of the fair. The exhibitors' offer was extremely generous for the visitors of our platform. All in all, promoted as part of this virtual edition were Romania's most beautiful touristic areas, which were represented, as usual, by county councils and municipalities. Practically, we could say our visitors had their fair share of the most comprehensive digital experience in the field of tourism, being a couple of clicks away from purchasing their much-desired holiday, at once enjoying the leisure of their own home. "

The Descoperimromania.ro platform was one of the exhibitors. The platform presented the most beautiful and the most attractive destinations. With details on that, here is project manager Alina Rosoiu who also disclosed virtual visitors' areas of interest.

Alina Rosoiu:

"Tourists are interested in Romania, in traditions, in special accommodation units with a limited number of rooms. This year, tourists' interest in hotel compounds has been on the wane. Extremely sought-after are the little guesthouses and agro guesthouses. We have a special interest in the Danube Delta, in the Romanian Black Sea coast, in Maramures and, last but not the least, in Bukovina. We have very good offers for tourists. For instance, Easter Holiday packages start from 200 Euros, for a stay in the Danube Delta, and from 150 Euros for a stay in the Danube Gorges. The pandemic, which is still ongoing, may scare us, yet we need to know Romania is a safe destination. We do our best for our guests' safety. We're waiting for you and we comply with all the sanitary safety standards in place. We're in the middle of nature, so there is a minimum amount of risk. Accommodation units abide by the sanitary protection requirements, so it should be no problem for you to visit Romania.

One of the most sought-after destinations at the fair was Maramures, as expected. Maramures County Council's head of the Public Relations Department, Laura Danci, gave us the details on that.

Laura Danci:

"The stand of Maramures this year was not as lively as it was in the previous years, sadly, because of the pandemic. We were present only through an online platform, yet we did have a couple of offers and we also came up with a new site, Visit Maramures. The offer we have come up with at the Tourism Fair was labelled 'Twelve reasons to visit Maramures' while on our new site, Visit Maramures, we have covered just about everything Maramures had to offer to tourists, from gastronomy, traditional craftsmen to cultural tourist routes, to landscape. In the previous years we also launched an application for mobile devices, Visit Maramures, where we made available all tourism information centers, all the guesthouses. Yet we thought that a website will be a lot easier to access by everybody. We took part in the fair, and the feedback we got was quite good. We had very many visitors, even online. Hundreds of visitors asked us what they could visit in Maramures and what a surprise we had, in three days alone, the site had 2,047 views. "

Carmen Păun is Head of the Marketing and PR Office of Oltenia's Museum in Craiova, Ms Paun invites us to take a cultural trip to southern Romania.

Carmen Paun:

"It has been a privilege for us, as a cultural institution, to receive an invitation from Romania's Tourism Fair, the virtual edition, 2021. Our products have met the demands of our public, whose interest in digital consumption is growing: information, education, entertainment. Our offer entirely focused on these three components. We started off from the idea that the scope of a museum and its cultural products needs to go beyond the physical confines. So we created cultural products meant to draw the public especially through visual impact and then through the information we offer."

The Museum of Oltenia is an institution which is more than 105 years old, it is a cultural landmark for the area of Oltenia, having a regional importance.

Carmen Paun:

"It manages an impressive heritage, of which 570 items have been included in the treasure category. We do our job in four separate buildings, right at the heart of Craiova, always awaiting our visitors with our 12 essential permanent exhibitions of three sections that we have. Also, we have three interactive areas and two modern conference rooms. So what we got is a huge potential Oltenia's cultural sector in Craiova offers to the public. As of late we have also promoted educational programs. We have digitalized the content of our exhibitions extensively.

Thanks to the local administration, since 2016, Dolj County has had a cultural-artistic route, labelled "Dolj history and traditions", with five major assets: the Bania House, the history and archaeology section, and two semi-fortified buildings, cule, in Romanian, located in the commune of Brabova. For the refurbishment of the two cule alone, more than one million Euros has been invested ".

We have also reached Transylvania and we spoke to Sturza Ileana, with the Zlatna Tourism Promotion and Information Center.

Sturza Ileana:

"Our virtual tourism information and promotion stand covered the accommodation units in the region, natural tourist assets, the anthropic ones, the region's specific traditions and the tourist routes. For lovers of nature, we have two, maybe three-hour routes, but also routes lasting 13 to 14 hours or even a couple of days. I should also like to mention the natural assets, the limestone blocks in Valea Mica, the Fenes Gorges, the Bulbuci Rock. For those who are into climbing and sports climbing, the Fenes Gorges and the Bulbuci Rock are the perfect destination. We have received collaboration offers from travel agents, from other tourism operators and I think we have made ourselves more visible that before. I can infer that from the great number of viewers we had."

Access was free of charge to the virtual edition of Romania's Tourism Fair. The virtual stands could be accessed from anywhere, while special offers were found very quickly, thanks to the intelligent filtering system.