On-line Romania - go sightseeing
- Posted by Anca on February 27th, 2007 filed in Tourism and travel
Opportunity: offering online touristic information about Romania
“Romania has a huge potential for attracting tourists†– this is a statement that you will hear everywhere – in conferences, in TV shows, in debates, in the newspapers. Tourism is one area that has huge development capability and is considered an advantage when it comes to talk about Romania’s competitiveness on the EU market. However improvements are needed in infrastructure, developing and diversifying services and not least promoting a better image.
There are a lot of EU funds programmed to be spent in developing tourism in Romania in the following five years. All you need (at the beginning) is a good project idea.
We have a wonderful country but only the ones who live in it or visited it know about this. All they can do is to tell their friends and recommend it (if they had a good experience). The offers from the agencies are another option, when it comes to attracting new tourists, but usually they sell packages for the seaside and mountain area. This is not enough. Romania is much more than going to the seaside in the summer and skiing in the mountains during the winter. So, how could we attract more tourists?
One solution would be to create a portal with tourist attractions all over Romania. The portal should also include information about accommodation. It should include a database with offers and pictures of hotels and villas from all over Romania (or it could be created for parts of Romania).
This is a project that could be financed out of EU funding (at least part of it if not all) in the initial phase – creation of the database and gathering the information. There are also available solutions for assuring the project’s self-sustainability after EU financing is over and continued profit for the portal developer.
Written by Anca
February 28th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Nice post, Anca… you made a good point!
February 28th, 2007 at 8:24 pm
If you open this to people to write reviews and comments on tourist attractions, this could become a first-stop place for tourists planning a vacation here.
February 28th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Would this be in Romanian or English, or both?
February 28th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
I have had some very bad evetns with some hotels that I want to vent somewhere people can find htem usefull.
March 2nd, 2007 at 2:28 am
Another solution could be to introduce a “tourism space†i.e. a project open to all kinds of media (current and emerging) and physicality. The end product of it could be an expanding network entailing: -
1) A database-backed portal with all pertinent information of tourist attractions, offers, provided that the main participants/stakeholders/beneficiaries are organizations related to tourism.
2) A community inspired by the concept of Communities 2.0, consisting of empowered users/individuals that view and share Romanian tourism experiences in the forms of new media. This mainly entails:
a) universal blogs with videos, pictures and text
b) separate blogs/posts in each medium like vlogs, text blogs etc.
While being accredited by other users through comments and ratings on their posts, users can also be monetarily awarded (advertising revenue shared in amounts based on the number of views and ratings by other users).
3) Separate spaces on TV and Radio in the form of purchased airtime or a constructed/acquired channel, that reach the target market and air tourism content, including the content from other paradigms of the network. Romania also boasts being one of the most dynamic media markets in southeastern Europe.
4) Physical spaces under the project’s umbrella with the main purpose of organizing Romanian-tourism-promotional events within target markets/countries. They can fist be established within the EU and then countries outside the EU with most tourist outflow. More value can be added to operations/events through the content produced/acquired by other network paradigms.
March 3rd, 2007 at 11:41 am
Very interesting ideas Ali. Usually…for European funded projects, they can be very large scale projects. This would match with your comprehensive plan very well.
March 4th, 2007 at 12:28 am
Thanks Steve.
I have to say the blog’s excellent.
May 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
http://search.lonelyplanet.com/search.do?Ntt=romania&x=0&y=0