Elena Udrea’s suggestion earlier this month that Romania should make some kind of attempt to copy Hungary and become a world-class destination for lovers of thermal baths is not the worst suggestion you will hear this year. Done right, it could be a good one.
Met with much derision when appointed Minister of Tourism, Udrea has made a mixed start. She made herself look stupid when she cried at a Gheorghe Zamfir recital in Germany, and her expensive taste in clothes and handbags does her no favours.
But on what she does for Romanian tourism will she (and so should she) be judged, so let’s do that…
Romania is not Hungary. Hungary has more spas and thermal bath complexes than almost any other country in the world. Most of the spas have been around since Roman or Ottoman times, and many are architectural gems (we think here especially of the Gellert, or Szechenyi baths in Budapest). More recently, most Hungarian cities, towns and resorts have supplemented the older bath complexes with newer aqua parks. The best is at Debrecen, and we are ourselves frequent visitors.
Romania has a number of spa resorts of its own, or at least it did have. The current state of once glorious resorts such as Baile Herculane and Felix is awful. Neglected for decades they attract few visitors beyond locals and Romania’s elderly, many of whom still get communist-style subsidised holidays here. With much private investment (and state incentives to do so) these resorts could become desirable locations again.
Udrea’s idea of the state financing a spa resort to the north of Bucharest should be a non-starter. People will never come to Bucharest to ‘take the waters.’ Trust us on this one. But there are places in Romania that could again become great spa resorts, and the general idea is sound.
We also approve of Udrea’s desire to rid Romania of its Dracula image. It’s old hat and deserves to go. Romania should also stop concentrating on what it does badly (but thinks it does well), especially ski and beach resorts, and focus more on what it does well… like… ahem…
(If you can think of anything it does well, please tell us!)
First, however, Romania’s new Ministry of Tourism should do something very simple. Again, taking the Hungarian model, it should finance the opening of good, helpful and genuinely useful tourist information offices all over the country. They should be staffed by smiling, happy, fruity young female students who speak at least one foreign language, and packed with leaflets, maps, guides and selling local transport tickets and such like.
They do not have to be open all the time: they can be seasonal where this makes sense, and can keep short-ish hours. Central locations can be provided free by local councils (again, this is the Hungarian model).
What should not be copied from Hungary is the name (Tourinform): a real throwback to the past, whose mere utterance suggest trades-union financed holidays to Lake Balaton.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
We also approve of Udrea’s desire to rid Romania of its Dracula image. It’s old hat and deserves to go. Romania should also stop concentrating on what it does badly (but thinks it does well), especially ski and beach resorts, and focus more on what it does well… like… ahem…
(If you can think of anything it does well, please tell us!)
CORRUPTION?
I really can agree with what everyone has to say. . . it’s just that there’s a difficult balance to be struck in a place such as Romania. Change the Maramures villages too dramatically and you won’t have as many tourists there. The reason people come to those villages is to see horse carts and the like. At the same time, of course, Romanian villagers should of course be free to modernize and make use of their hard earned Euros. What can be a bit heartbreaking though is to see some of the changes first hand if you’ve spent a lot of time in the villages, know people and are not just passing through. In the West we don’t think much of someone building an new home and painting it bright red or someone buying a new tractor so he can clear brush on his property, simply because not much is being lost or changing.
I was not saying it is wrong to give up using horse pulled carts and ox-pulled ploughs, but rather that this change will anyway kind of take away the place Davin fell in love with.
As for the way they build houses, kindly go to Huta-Certeze first. It is one thing to build new houses with the mod-cons one needs nowadays (and it does not hurt to respect the region’s traditional broad lines while building new houses), and something totally different to spoil everything you have there by raising houses which do not fit. Tourism in Maramures relies mostly on the region’s traditions and scenery. Take that away, and you will have no tourism. I am not saying this only as my point of view, I can feel it as feed-back coming from the foreign partners I work with. Many of them already cut Maramures off their programs because they say it is no longer worth flying into Baia Mare or taking the long hours’ drive there to try and figure nice buildings from kitsch.
What is wrong with people building new houses for themselves, and painting them whatever colour they want? Or stopping using the horse and cart? It may spoil the ‘charm’ of the village but by and large ‘charm’ in the Romanian countryside translates as poverty. A reason many people knocked down their wooden houses is because they were beyond redemption: and the people who live in them want what we have and take for granted, running water, inside toilets etc. Quite frankly it is their business what colour houses they build and theirs alone. And why should villages remain compact? Bucharest was a compact village once, so was London. Was it wrong to expand them?
And then, even a big part of Maramures (and not only) changed since 2003. Some of the horse-pulled carts were replaced by cars and even ATVs, many of the young work abroad (I am not saying this is bad), while quite many red, orange or pink concrete houses appear in the villages, sometimes replacing the wooden, old ones and next to always not respecting the local architecture. Look at what happened at Huta-Certeze (competing only with Teleorman’s Buzescu for the Kitsch Award), Borsa or at what has begun even in Poienile Izei after the raise of that shit new church not matching anything around. There is nobody to make people there understand that they will fuck up the very soul of their region if they go on with this building chaos; or to impose that by coming with a new construction ethics rule that is respected by all, so that villages remain relatively aesthetically and traditionally compact; just like the “all houses are painted white” rule in Malaga for instance (just an example). It is there that this ministry should make a stand, by talking to the local mayors and making people understand that their land is about a tradition that will go down the toilet if they go on with their current doing. But Udrea plays the typical politician’s barking at the moon instead. Great promises every day and nothing to follow. We have had that before.
I agree with all that you say Bucharestian. It’s just that, for me, Romania will always be about Maramures, where in 2003 when I spent a year there living with a family, before there were mobile phones or internet and few people had cars and hardly anyone had been abroad to Spain and Italy, I, an American, checked out of the modern world and entered a Europe that was lost everywhere else a hundred or more years ago. That experience remains the high point of my life. I realize most people though coming to Romania are not looking for the high point of their lives per se!
I agree, Davin, but no country (with very few exceptions, usually in the islands) can rely on a unique form of tourism. The same Romania you mention is host to a quite big number of corporate events, fairs, as well as cultural tours and even independent tourists seeking more than the Middle Age, Romanian village experience (whether it is about people that go to visit fortresses and monasteries or about people going for the legacy of different ethnic groups that lived or still live here). And most of these visitors could use precise, up-to-date and comprehensive information provided by such offices. These offices would not spoil the genuine feature of the Romanian / Hungarian / Gypsy / Saxon (where still existent) a.o. village, as those looking for such an experience would simply not go to, say, Vatra Dornei’s tourism office to ask for directions. But those looking for a local piece of advice would use them. Romania for one is so different and contrasting that – at least for the moment – there is plenty of room for them all. And more information cannot do any harm, quite to the contrary. Actually the country’s problem is the lack of up-to-date information that might be of any use.
Actual tourist offices in Romania would spell the end to true adventure here. The reason it is interesting to come to a place such as Romania is because genuine adventure is still possible (although it’s getting harder). I guess though if your aim is to get average Westerners to come to the country then you would need to make it easier to travel here. But my guess is that most travelers to Romania for the forseeable future will not be average people looking for a holiday and so I don’t know that putting tourist offices in villages will help bring more people here. Romania outside the cities is still too far off the beaten track for most. Just look at my images from a few days ago in Vizuresti:
http://nordichigh.blogspot.com/
When you have the chance, visit some of the big hotels built under Ceausescu in, say, Covasna, Herculane or Govora. They are shit. Starting with the design that never respected or fit the environment (look at what they did in Herculane for instance) and all the way to the endowments there, fittings, windows, uneven walls. I am talking about the way they were built, not about the way they look now, some 30-35 years later. Other than the old, poor and those needing the respective treatment in any conditions (and not affording to go abroad), nobody will go and willingly spend a night in one of those 2*- hotels.
Yes, Romania has some one third of the spa resources in Europe (mineral and thermal waters, healing mud, moffets). But this is just like saying that there’s plenty of snow in Antarctica, so that is the best place on earth for skiing. One needs roads (!), real spa hotels and nonetheless service; good service that is. Ocna Sibiului is one of the few places that were refurbished doing justice to what there was (I am referring only to Helios Hotel, the other one is bananas). But, ahem, go out of the hotel and you will find dirt, ruin and desolation except for a few other guesthouses. Furthermore, even there, they did not isolate the inner pool from the reception and the air is thick with humidity throughout the lobby. And then, even there they need to provide much more options in order to get the spa calling to its value and meaning in, say, Hungary.
Other than that, most “spas” in Romania are living off trade unions’ groups and subsidized stays of the elderly. And, honestly, with very few exceptions, I would not take a group of people looking for a spa stay, and have them hosted in one of those huge, uninspiring concrete buffs lacking the least of elegance, style and, yes again, quality service. As said above, there are a few hotels that try to also provide “spa stays”, but, if compared to what that really means, they are just mere attempts; and even there, we are talking just about very few such units in one in Sovata, one in Eforie, one in Herculane and a badly organized attempt in Bazna.
This aside, I would say the idea of developing this form of tourism is great. But it requires so many other things and investment, that this is no issue to start with (talking of the Ministry of Tourism). Take it as a personal point, but I would start with cleaning the ministry of its rusty, stiff mechanism, I would set some order there first, then also setting some order among the providers the ministry should regulate. And then I would try to identify those that are moving around and help them promote their regional interests. Say Recas Domain, Izvoare Resort, Viscri or Corund / Korond (just some examples). Start with their particular needs and help them find ways of development, then use the experience you got there with other projects. But never ever think only in grand terms of developing or promoting the whole country as one. That is the biggest mistake. There is no fabulospirit there; this is not India one promotes like “Incredible India” on CNN. If the ministry or whoever wants to break the stereotype image of poverty, bad service and “what the hell is there to do?”, they have to start with individual, particular, regional projects.
But they are talking spas while, as the guide of an US tour operator put it when returning to Sighisoara in 2008 (after visiting it for the first time in 2004): “What the hell has happened here? They have fucked it. Completely.” Sad, but true. For the city hall likes the cheese too much to look after the mice, while the ministry has daytime dreams while clinging on the old red tape.
I think we had about 40 spas when Ceausescu was President, not only in the mountains but also in Gorj and in the region of Moldova, however some of them probably don’t sound familiar to foreigners because immediately after 90 they ended up without funds.
I don’t know if the Hungarians even have space to develop 40 spas. So if we raise funds and invest in spas we have a big chance to become an important player on this market. In the 70′s people from Germany and Sweden used to come here for treatment. And what if they were old?! Someone has to take care of the elderly too, the youngsters don’t have that many problems…
But – as everything else in this colorfull country – the chain of spas requires lots of investments because it’s not only a hotel and a restaurant that was left in ruins – there’s an entire system that needs to be repaired, starting from trees and natural environment (because nobody comes to look at cleared mountains) to the authorities required to maintain such a spa. You need police, you need workers to take care of the spa, you need to be able to transport them to and from their homes, you need some basic entertainment because people can’t watch the sky for 2 weeks.
When Ceausescu was President – all this infrastructure was present, was working and was predictable because the state took care of it according to it’s rules. Now you have to do it with private funds and when private funds are involved in a country without regulations nothing is predictable anymore.
So there will be another 30 years until those spas will be up and running again.
Some of her intentions look (or rather sound) well so far. However this (developing spas or a new Vama Veche if the old one does not get back to its senses) is nothing but propaganda until something really happens. We have had enough debate and brainstorming-meant-to-be quarrels. Before this Bucharest Spa fashion we had the Dracula Park fashion and even before that other projects just as utopian and misplaced. Projects that were never accomplished… hmm… well, not even started for real, other than at the 8 o’clock news.
As for the Romanian Ministry of Tourism (former Tourism Authority, former Ministry etc.), it only prints 1980 design leaflets and brochures, respectively rents quite big plots at various tourism fairs abroad (but does its best to make the worst use of them, either through design or through promotion etc.). Honestly, I care little about who is in charge, I shall not believe a word until I see a change happen. I mean, a change as far as the Romanian state and its presence abroad is concerned.
So far, the only realistic change to the better in the Romanian tourism was brought by investors that did everything by themselves, without getting any help from the authorities, which provide no know-how, no assistance and no reference. To name but a few, Sfantu Gheorghe’s Green Village, Tusnad’s Fortuna, Oradea’s Vulturul Negru, Bucharest’s Carol Parc (well, they still have to work on having it full), Targu Mures’ Concordia or Timisoara’s La Residenza are all success stories based next to exclusively on their management. Furthermore, they are islands in a sea of kitsch and bad service. As for the Romanian Government (as a whole ): corruption, dusty courses and speeches that say nada, quarrels and that never ending show meant to have Romanians clap their hands and cheer over yet another glass of beer coming from a cheap 2 l. plastic bottle.
I for one would appreciate more Udrea’s coming with a not so fancy, but more appropriate idea of not allowing these idiots to build any sort of monstrosity and call it a hotel, disregarding of whether they are set in a medieval town, in a nature park or in the countryside. Because, in the end of the day, her institution is the one granting the tourism operation license for them all. Let the Ministry of Tourism shake hands with the local authorities and decide to stop this chaotic building mania, let it be less corrupt with granting licenses and be more active with providing assistance and promoting the country. And then come with glorious ideas that will remain only that. We have had that before.