The Danube Delta remains a destination where boarding house owners complain about the lack of tourists, while tourism associations say that the region will attract more tourists once tourism becomes organized and products tailored specifically for this destination are launched.
There were only 8,900 tourists reported in the Danube Delta in the first seven months of the year, 900 fewer than in the same time of the previous year. Almost 33% of them were foreign tourists, according to the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Authority. Things are not as bad as they seem, and the decline might be just a consequence of the crisis and of the increase in informal tourism, as both tourism and boarding house owners prefer not to register accommodation officially to pay less in taxes.
The authority data are the official figures, based on reports from boarding houses and hotels. However, if taking into account informal tourism, about 100,000 people travel to the Danube Delta every year, travel consultants told Business Magazin.
Despite it being the third largest delta in Europe and one of the most important touristic regions of Romania, the Danube Delta sees fewer tourists every year than other smaller European deltas, such as the Camargue Delta (France) and Delta del Po (Italy), which welcome over one million tourists a year.
“There wasn’t much demand for accommodation from the beginning of the year until August. We got 25% lower revenue. Moreover, we also dropped plans to sell the hotel complex because no one is interested to buy,” says Cornel Gaina, owner of the Cormoran hotel complex in the Danube Delta. He was one of the first tourism entrepreneurs in the region and built the complex in Uzlina, Tulcea County (SE Romania) together with his wife in 1994. The development of the area, the building of more hotels and the slow business that followed made him put Cormoran up for sale three years ago.
Many resorts closed for lack of tourists last year, such as the five-star Delta Nature Resort in Somova. It was reopened this March and the company currently has several groups of tourists staying in the resort.
A one-week stay costs almost EUR280-EUR300 in the Danube Delta. Many tourists choose to stay in a tent or book only a few nights in a hotel or boarding house of a longer stay because of accommodation tariffs.
The season is almost eight or nine months long in the Danube Delta, which means that if organized tourism were put in place, people could travel to this part of Romania from April through November or even December.
Andrei Blumer, the chairman of the Association of Ecotourism in Romania, says diversified travel products are needed to get more tourists to come. “Promotion and projects are needed,” he says. One such example is the project Ivan Patzaichin. It entails the opening of seven boat rental centers throughout the delta, so that tourists could go on boat trips. The investment will amount to EUR1.5 million, says Patzaichin’s partner Teodor Frolu.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)