“If we applied the same tariffs as hotels in Bulgaria or Greece, we would go bankrupt. Bulgarian seaside hotels have prices lower by 20% to 25% than Romanian hotels,” said Mohammad Murad, president of the Romanian Employers’ Federation in Tourism (FPTR) and owner of several hotels on the Black Sea coast.
According to Murad, Romanian hotel owners can’t reduce tariffs to match those in Bulgaria, where the value added tax is 9% (compared to a 24% VAT in Romania) and taxes are lower.
Murad highlighted foreign tourists prefer Bulgaria to Romania because the former offers cheaper services.
“Romanians spend almost two times more than foreign tourists, so hotel owners gain two times more from them than from the latter,” said Murad.
He added that, because of Romania’s bad image abroad, foreign tour operators ask for low tariffs.
Tariffs demanded by foreign tour operators are significantly low, while prices paid by Romanian tourists in July and August are enough to cover hotel owners’ costs for the entire summer,” said Lucia Morariu, owner of tour operator Eximtur and former state secretary with the Tourism Ministry.
“All hotel owners on the Romanian Black Sea coast prefer Romanian tourists, as they are generous when it comes to spending money and are not hard to please. Foreign tourists would complicate things. Hotel owners would have to lower tariffs by at least 30% and ensure better trained personnel, that must also have command of foreign languages,” said Corina Martin, president of tourism association ANAT.
Tourism agency Danubius manager Ciprian Popescu said foreign tour operators are pleased with how Romanian seaside hotels look like, but are totally stunned by tariffs.
According to authorities, the Romanian tourism sector stepped out of the crisis even if revenues obtained from the about 25,000 foreign tourists that visited the Romanian sea coast last year did not exceed EUR15 million. Mired by recession, Greece registered revenues from tourism of over EUR10 billion in 2011, up over 9% on the year.