Calin Ile graduated from the Faculty of Tourism of the University of Economic Studies Bucharest in 1995. He graduated from the school for International Hotel Managers at Cornell University and EHMI, but also attended tourism courses at the Den Hauge International Hotel School. Since 2015, Călin Ile is the president of FHIR – the Romanian Federation of the Hotel Industry.
In 2020, he was one of the founders of the Alliance for Tourism, also known as APT, which seeks to unite the hospitality industry in Romania . APT developed, during the coronavirus pandemic, the document “SOS Romanian Tourism”, which outlined ten short-term solutions and fifty medium- and long-term solutions for the industry. Călin is also a member of the board of directors of the Concordia Employers’ Confederation, one of the most important employers’ organizations for social dialogue. I have made this introduction to you so that you understand that Călin lle’s opinion on Romanian tourism is an extremely qualified one.
The face of Romanian tourism - are we ready for what's to come?
In March 2022, I agreed to write a series of articles about the future of Romanian tourism starting from the generic title "The face of Romanian tourism - are we ready for what's to come?" The goal was to reach the most important aspects where we believe that change is needed and especially to prepare for the long-awaited transformation that all of us in tourism are waiting for, regardless of whether we are talking about consumers of tourist services, employees or tourism investors.
The previous articles, published in Horeca magazine , contain an analysis of the directions where the change of Romanian tourism is absolutely necessary and without which we will always lag behind other countries, we will continue to be the state with great tourism potential, but never capitalized on, we will always remain at the stage of hope, never reaching that of certainty.
Let's take a look at what the Image of Romanian Tourism means
From the beginning, I think it should be stated that the image of a tourist destination is extremely important, because it influences not only the choice of destination by tourists, but also the level of satisfaction of these tourists once they arrive there. Often, destinations enter into battle with something more than the image created and induced in the minds of potential tourists, respectively they also rely on their imagination. Therefore, those who do destination marketing allocate many resources to create the favorable and desired image to win over potential tourists, so as to make them visit and subsequently return to a certain destination.
Why does Romania not have a favorable image for tourism?
For Romania, all the above statements are just texts, a theory that has NO applicability in creating an image, in promoting destinations. Why, I wonder? Why do I think that, today, Romanian tourism does not matter in terms of image? And, unfortunately, I say that I am not the only one who states this, since recently two renowned specialists in destination management from Greece and Slovenia mentioned, during a conference held in Braşov, that, in their country, Romania does not have a good or bad image, but simply DOES NOT HAVE any image. An extremely sad observation that we are forced to come up with explanations and, above all, which requires us to act as quickly as possible.
•• We lack entities to manage destination marketing.
Although we have been struggling for 10-15 years to create a legal, functional framework to regulate WMO Destination Management Organizations, we have not yet succeeded in creating one that works in any way acceptable to be able to compete with similar organizations in Europe, with whom we want - we don't want, we often end up being in competition. And when I say that, I mean both micro (cities or resorts), medium (regions or counties) or large (associations of counties or even national) destinations. The cause of the delays we face in the emergence of these entities is hallucinatory: because some have interests in getting their hands on the promotion money and so it's better not to launch them, because others don't think we need promotion until we invest enough in tourism so we will do it in the holy-waiting way, or, the most used excuse, as if we cannot take over these attributions from the hands of the state, that it is only the competence of the administrations to promote. So here we are still without functional MDGs 33 years after the revolution.
•• We lack specialists with experience and results in this field.
We find very few tourism-oriented marketing specialists and perhaps even fewer tourism specialists with a vision and openness to marketing. I wonder with concern who would be the people who would lead the long-awaited MDGs in the conditions where we would eventually overcome the difficulties of creating these entities. I am thinking here of the specialists we are desperately waiting for and not of the famous "pupils" placed in positions of different interests, either political or business in equal measure.
•• We do not allocate the necessary budgets for promotion.
Any company that wants its image has a well-established marketing budget depending on the phase in which the product or the company is, depending on the ambitions it has and the objectives it proposes. We are talking about percentages of the turnover and we are talking about marketing investments without which we only live in an illusion or we are only counting on luck that we will ever have a real image that promotes the tourist destinations in Romania. What would Romania look like if it allocated at least 1% of the revenues created by tourism for its tourism promotion? And for the figure to take shape in your mind, consider that Romania makes about two billion euros annually from tourism, so that 1% would mean, without much calculations, an amount of about 20 million euros per year just for promotion. Do you know how much budget the Romanian Ministry of Tourism has per year for promotion? Around 1 million euros / year, with indulgence.
•• We don't have the necessary courage, we lack the commitment to do things.
Every time Romania tried to do some promotional action, it didn't even matter if it was good or bad, the critical reaction was fast and extremely radical. And this means that at the moment there are no political leaders or tourism specialists who have the strength to go all the way, to allocate resources and make strategies, to delegate the right people to get results, to invest in the image . Always when you build you will start with unpleasant things that can disturb or seem absurd, but without them we will never be able to place the construction on the desired coordinates for success. And we must take these first steps.
•• Extremely poor communication.
It is worrying to see that there is no spokesperson position in the Ministry of Tourism and that no one there is willing to assume this role. (I don't want to think now how many employees of MAT would be willing to communicate decently in a foreign language, because I would remember the last episode in Brussels with a secretary of state from MAT put in obvious difficulty in maintaining a dialogue in English).
And I also believe that even at the level of local administrations there are no people who find it important to communicate about tourism and vacations. I have witnessed countless crises in our tourism over time, and I don't remember ever finding a decision-maker who communicated transparently, assumed, timely, timely and, above all, honestly, in such a way as to blur crisis or even turn it into opportunity. Unfortunately, the weaknesses in communication are also manifested in the private environment. Not even us, from professional associations or tourism companies, not finding the most correct way to communicate with our market, makes many clichés about our tourism propagate beyond the reality given by figures and arguments and enter the territory of subjective perceptions , unfortunately mostly negative.
•• We each act on our own, there is no collaboration, there is no cooperation.
This may represent our greatest deficiency, we do not see the common interest and act independently, pursuing only our own interest. Especially in the state institutions we see overlaps of promotion interests, we do not see a harmonization of the budgets from tourism with those from culture or sports, from the ministry of Romanians everywhere to that of the economy, from the general secretariat of the Government or from different county councils, which each act on their own, without head and without tail. The same thing happens at the level of destinations. Just think of Bucharest, how the budgets are divided between the various bodies within the PMB, and you will have a dimension of the waste of resources between them in the absence of cooperation between them. The same thing in the private sector, we do not see a harmonization of interests between the actors in the field in such a way that the promotion of Romania brings the desired results.
When we discuss the Image and Promotion of Romania, only failures come to mind
If when we talk about investments in tourism we also have positive examples, especially in the last period being many properties that rise to an international level, when we discuss the Image and Promotion of Romania, nothing but failures come to mind. Remember all the brand attempts of Romanian tourism in the last 25 years (Eternal and fascinating Romania from 1995, Dracula Parc from 2001, Romania Simply Surprising 2004, Romania Fabulous Spirit 2007, Romania The Land of Choice 2009 or Explore the Carpathian Garden 2010) and you will see that they all resulted in resounding failures. Why can't we get out of this paradigm? Why, despite the involvement of specialists from the private sector in the new Brand Council, we still can't make progress? Romania's presence at tourism fairs is still inconclusive and unsatisfactory - to put it elegantly.
Conclusions
Far be it from me to become the service critic and find only negative things when talking about a certain field. I always try to find the aspects that can lead to progress, that can bring the unlocking and, implicitly, the evolution of the field I write about. I always call for action, call for involvement and always react to the opinions of eminently critical commentators, without any attempt to propose solutions. Unfortunately, in this field of promotion, of Romania's image and not only of tourism, the situation is more difficult and complicated than in other fields. If for investments, for increasing quality, for workforce education, for digitization or sustainability, a good part of the answer lies in the hands of the private environment and solutions can also come from the stimulation of individual action until the moment of reaching a critical mass that matters, at promotion level individual efforts are almost invariably drops in the ocean, resources thrown away without much chance of success. We admire and enjoy what Charlie Ottley or those from Untold are doing for the image of Romania, but it is far too little to bet that it becomes something structured and efficient. It represents a welcome signal, it means a lot for us that it shows how it can be done and that it can be done, but to bring results, to increase the number of tourists from two to three million to eight to ten million foreign tourists, much more is needed that's all. It is shown by all the countries that mattered and matter in tourism, regardless of the area or time period we are referring to. And if they can do this with results, why wouldn't we at least hope that one day we will also find the ways to do a proper promotion, which will bring the much desired and expected image.
And even if it seems difficult, despite the fact that for so many years we have still not managed to decipher this chapter of promotion, let's still think that through ambition, through will, we will eventually reach the desired result, because "an uninterrupted series of small acts of will gives a very large result at a given moment" , to end this article with a quote, this time from the French poet Charles Baudelaire.
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