“2012 brings stagnation. This mix of a crisis year, local elections and a depreciating leu makes 2012 a rubbish year,” says Radu Enache.
Continental Hotels, one of the largest hotel groups on the local market, which owns 14 hotels, can be a good barometer for the local tourism industry. Take-up in the first five months stood at 55% on the average, the businessman said.
“I expect revenue to be the same as in the first half of last year, that is about EUR10 million. I estimate full-year revenue to reach about EUR20 million to EUR21 million, the same as last year,” he added.
Spanish investment fund GED bought 30% in Continental Hotels last year. The plan after this deal was to build ten two-star hotels, Radu Enache announced. He now says he will not start building anything for the time being.
“I can’t start building unless there’s predictability on the market. The leu has depreciated over the last few months and this has a significant impact on my business.”
This year’s budget was built around a 4.32 lei to the euro exchange rate, as the businessman said last year. Now the leu has gone down to 4.4 against the euro.
“I am extremely cautious. We are not revising the budgets, we’re within last year’s budget with insignificant margins of error,” Enache says.
Most customers prefer two-star hotels as they did last year. As for the five-star Grand Hotel Continental, where a room costs EUR95 per night, about half of the rooms have been occupied on the average since the beginning of the year.
“We’ve been going around in circles for almost three years. (…) Nothing new,” Radu Enache says.
He explains the authorities wanted tourism to contribute 1.9% to the gross domestic product but it did not happen and the contribution remained at 1.4% to 1.5% of GDP.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)