So, the bottom has fallen out of the Romanian tourist industry. Adevarul reported yesterday that the number of incoming foreign visitors had fallen 13.3 per cent in the first five months of 2009 (compared to the same period of the previous year). In actual numbers, that means just 2.7 million people arrived from January to May. And not all were tourists: more than 30 per cent of visitors are Hungarians, many of whom will be visiting – and staying with – family.
The situation for hotels is dire. Whereas Romania’s hotels registered 5.8 million overnights from January to May 2008, this year the number of overnights has crashed, to just 4.6 million.
All of this comes at a time when Romania’s Ministry of Tourism (MT; led by the lovely Elena Udrea) is running perhaps its most visible ever international advertising campaign. Alas, it is doing so under the auspices of the dreadful ‘Romania: Land of Choice‘ slogan, complete with awful song, and perhaps the worst piece of branding in Romanian marketing history.
Then of course there are the ads. (One of the TV ads is here, two of the print ads are below). The TV ads at least are not all that bad (they are not great, either), but it’s all a bit predictable. Nadia Comaneci, Ilie Nastase and Gheorghe Hagi. Is that it? Is that all you got?
Haystack, field, football pitch, Hagi. Must have taken days for the creative dept. to come up with that
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It’s 20 years this December since Romania bade Nicolae Ceausescu farewell, and really should have moved on from the ‘we’ve got some top sports stars’ approach to selling the country. Comaneci, Nastase and Hagi all of course achieved much, and all are well known abroad. But then so is Samuel Eto’o. Doesn’t make you want to jump on a plane to Cameroon though, does it?
Indeed, the participation of Comaneci, Nastase and Hagi owes far more to the MT’s choice of partner than to anything else. BRD, the French bank, is sponsoring the campaign. BRD’s ‘brand ambassadors’ of course are Hagi, Comaneci and Nastase. BRD and the MT also share an ad agency.
As for the whole Land of Choice campaign, our first question would be how important is it to run ads on foreign television stations imploring people to come visit your country anyway? Do they work?
When it comes to holidays most people select destinations on a strict price/expectation ratio. If we want something luxurious we think Seychelles, Mauritius or – closer to home – the French Riviera, or Tuscany maybe. If we want cheap and cheerful we think Spain, Turkey, and increasingly, Bulgaria. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when we might think ‘Romania.’ (Answers on the proverbial postcard, please).
This is where the MT and the lovely Elena need to be focusing their efforts: finding a niche or two and going for them big time.
And because we are in a good mood, here’s one idea for them to start with: gambling.
Russia banned gambling last week, leaving Bucharest as the casino capital of central and eastern Europe. So why not go for Europe’s gamblers? Sell Bucharest as Europe’s mini-Las Vegas. It’s a hell of a lot nearer than Vegas, and in these difficult times even high rolling gamblers are making cutbacks. Add in the Romanian capital’s proximity to the Middle East (a big source of gamblers) and you have a decent sized niche with little competition anywhere else on the continent (only Prague springs to mind, though Bucharest has more high-class casinos).
A no brainer? Or are we as deluded as the Ministry of Tourism?
I mean, really: Bucharest, Europe’s Vegas? We can’t see it, can you?
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Casino ideas is good but it make some un-usual rule to get settled down.
Agree, the song is awful, but I showed the TV ads to friends in London and that made them want to visit. If I were marketing Romania, I’d focus on Brasov, Cluj, Sighisoara and the Belle Epoque buildings in Bucharest.
I do like the casino idea. Legalising drugs and prostitution would drag in more than a few tourists as well
You didn’t like the casino idea?
Tourism ads are always laughable. I pitched and won the Romanian advertising account once. There were some choice moments. Like when the lead client (fat old man in his sixties who has 3 buxom secretaries who has probably been quite attractive about 5 years previously) insisted that anything we do had to make Bucharest look ultra modern “ca New York sau asa ceva”. This was about 10 years ago.
Our ads were pretty bad but not this bad. The reality is that a good PR campaign aimed at travel editors across Europe would work wonders if it was well thought through. Romania as a Latin island in a sea of Slavs is one intriguing proposition and even vaguely justifiable.
As a matter of fact I’m a gambler myself.
Bucharest’s casinos are small and they can hardly cope with the existing clients. If we put 100 more clients each evening they wouldn’t have seats at the roulette table.
Even as we are now there are times when you have to wait 10 minutes for the dealer to pay winnings on one single spin. The good thing is that we have a few casinos located in the same area: the Grand Casino and the Platinum across the street from each other, Casa Vernescu a bit farther down on Calea Victoriei and Queen’s Casino at the Howard Johnson hotel. And if anyone wants to smell like cigar smoke forever he can try one the two Princess casinos located at Universitate. There’s also one on Magheru which used to be called MGM now I don’t recall it’s name because it’s been 2 years since I never been in there but I remember it was quite ok.
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