A new tourist brand for Romania

Thursday was designated Romania’s National Day at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai.

On that occasion, the Romanian foreign minister, Teodor Baconschi, and the tourism minister, Elena Udrea, accompanied by former great Romanian sporting personalities such as Nadia Comaneci, Ilie Nastase and Gheorghe Hagi, urged people, for the first time, to “Explore Romania, the Carpathian Garden”.

This is the slogan of the new country brand, aimed at enticing potential foreign visitors to Romania – a country where they can enjoy a huge range of different kinds of tourism: activity tourism, spa treatment, historical, cultural and religious trips and also weekend breaks.

The avowed ambition of Romania’s new national tourism campaign is to make a name for Romania and place it on the tourist map in Central and South Eastern Europe.

At present, turnover in this sector is rather small, and not only in comparison with Greece, Turkey or neighboring Bulgaria.

"Romania no for mass tourism"

In full summer season, and also in full economic crisis, the number of foreigners hoteliers can expect to see at the Romanian Black Sea Coast is around 50 thousand at the most.

Minister Udrea herself admitted that “Romania cannot try to practice mass tourism” and that “The Romanian Black Sea Coast is not a competitive product on the international market for the time being”.

In the Carpathian Mountains, the still precarious infrastructure discourages those foreigners who might choose trekking in the Carpathians.

Romanians themselves prefer to spend their holidays abroad. That is why it’s rather unlikely that the newly launched “Carpathian Garden” campaign will have a greater impact than the similar slogans that governments since the mid 1990s have vainly employed in a bid to attract tourists.

The green leaf controversy

Slogans such as “The eternal and fascinating Romania”, “The always surprising Romania”, “Fabulospirit” or “Romania, land of choice” have been launched and later withdrawn from the market, falling into oblivion instantly.

Not to mention that Romania’s new logo, a vectorised green leaf, has been the target of controversy and irony.

People have been speculating that the image was taken from clip-art style images on the Internet, while others noted the similarities with the leaf on England’s ecological buses.

Some commentators have suggested that minister Udrea’s leaf may well end up withering and falling from the government tree in the height of summer.

(Radio România Internaţional, Serviciul în limba engleză).