Tourism and hospitality  SYNTHESIS 2015

International Scientific Conference of IT and Business-Related Research

PROMOTING ROMANIA’S TOURISM ATTRACTIONS IN THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT

PROMOCIJA TURISTIČKE PONUDE RUMUNIJE U ONLINE OKRUŽENJU

Cipriana Sava Faculty of Tourism and Commercial Management Timişoara, Christian University “D. Cantemir”, Bucharest, Romania

Abstract: Apstrakt: Located between 43°37’07” and 48°15’06” north latitude and 20°15’44” Rumunija se nalazi u jugoistočnoj Evropi između 43°37’07 “i 48°15’06” and 29°41’24” east longitude, in south-central east Europe, and with severne geografske širine i 20°15’44“ i 29°41’24” istočne geografske all relief forms, Romania is one of the countries that can have an dužine, sa svim reljefnim oblicima. Kao takva, ona je jedna od zema- important role in the foreign tourists’ preferences. The multitude lja koje mogu u velikoj meri uticati na preferencije stranih turista. and variety of tourist attractions all over the country offer numerous Mnoštvo i raznolikost turističkih atrakcija dostupnih širom zemlje leisure time possibilities. Currently, efforts are being made to trans- doprinose sve većem broju aktivnosti koje turisti mogu upražnjavati form and upgrade the image of Romania as a tourism destination and u slobodno vreme. Trenutno se ulažu veliki napori kako bi se una- promote its attractions at the international level. Such opportunity is predila slika Rumunije kao turističke destinacije, kao i promovisala triggered by modern technology that has become a fundamental tool njena turistička ponuda na međunarodnom tržištu. To je pre svega for marketing activities. The creation of websites for the purpose of omogućeno zahvaljujući savremenoj tehnologiji koja postaje ključna presenting the tourism offer of Romania enhances the visibility and alatka za realizaciju marketinških aktivnosti. Kreiranjem sajtova za interest of potential tourists. prezentovanje turističke ponude Rumunije povećava se vidljivost i interesovanje potencijalnih turista.

Key words: Ključne reči: tourism, tourism attractions, promotion, online environment. turizam, turističke atrakcije, promocija, online okruženje.

1. INTRODUCTION to these motivations, the analyst Plog S., in “Why destination areas rise and fall in popularity” (1972), classifies the tourists People have always been willing to spend their free time as follows: outside their home, but the choice of a holiday destination is ◆◆ psychocentrics (those looking for destinations close to affected by a series of factors. These factors can be grouped into their home and planning ahead their holiday); several categories, according to the given criteria. Taking into ◆◆ near psychocentrics (those influenced by the decision of consideration the marketing profile, we can distinguish the fol- the group they belong to); lowing factors: ◆◆ mid-centrics (those resorting to the services of a tourist ◆◆ factors of tourist demand such as the population’s in- agency); comes, the urbanization degree, the free time, the dy- ◆◆ near allocentrics (persons who love freedom but do not namics of the population evolution; take risks); ◆◆ factors of tourist offer such as the unity and variety of ◆◆ allocentrics (those preferring the underdeveloped tourist tourism resources, the diversity and the quality of ser- regions, the destinations harder to reach). vices, the cost of services, the structure and the labour force training. The decision to choose the holiday destination and the tour- ist product will always be an important moment of a wilful ac- Besides these factors, there is also the motivation of po- tion. tential tourists, which actually influences the decision to buy a certain tourism product. Their decision is personal and subjec- Different marketing actions are used in order to influence tive, determined by endogenous, psychological, and exogenous the decision of potential tourists. One of these is the promotion motivation, influenced by the social environment. The psycho- aimed at attracting new tourists and maintaining the existing logical motivation refers to the individual’s perception, his/her ones. beliefs and attitudes, former experiences and needs. The promotion of a tourist attraction or a destination can be As regards exogenous motivation, an individual takes into made through different traditional actions (participation in spe- account the group he/she belongs to, the reference group, the cific events, documentation visits of those directly involved, or- social class, family and culture. ganization of promotion events, promotion road-shows abroad, All motivations that act towards every future tourist can cre- public relations activities) or through online sites. ate a favourable or an unfavourable image of a tourist attraction, Promotion provides information, remembering and persua- a tourist destination or a tourism form. Also, when referring sion of clients. 537

E-mail: [email protected] DOI: 10.15308/Synthesis-2015

-537-540 SYNTHESIS 2015  Tourism and hospitality

What it does? Romania’s tourism resources are numerous and diverse, - informs about the existence of a product, natural and anthropic, stretching across its territory. This has service, led to the appearance and development of several types and - reminds the public about the existence of forms of tourism. a product, service. Promotion What it can do? - persuade the public to buy the product or service it presents. Figure 1. Promotion – its role

Under the existing conditions, promotion is considered a major demand of the selling process of a tourism product.

2. ROMANIA AS A TOURIST DESTINATION

Romania is a European country located in the Southeastern part of the continent, stretching over an area of 238.391 km² Figure 2. Map of Romania – historical regions and neighbouring Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Republic of Mol- dova and Ukraine. The relief forms are evenly represented on its territory, with the mountains accounting for 31% of the ter- Every historical region of the country presents certain types ritory, the hills and orchards with 36% and plains with 33%. and forms of tourism according to its tourist resources. The Carpathian Mountains look like a bow in the middle of the As seen in Table 1, the tourists who arrive at any of the country, bounded to the interior and the exterior by hills and historical regions can choose a tourist destination and the pre- plateaus, while the plains go to the exterior. ferred type of tourism. The climate is temperate-continental with Mediterranean Some of the most appreciated tourist attractions in Romania influences and four distinct seasons. The access ways are di- are presented in Table 2 and Table 3. verse: road, rail, air, river and sea.

Romania’s historical regions Representative types of tourism Maramureş Cultural, sport (winter sports), mountain, rural; Bukovina Religious, culinary, rural, cultural, leisure Moldavia Mountain, wellness, religious, cultural, scientific, rural Dobruja Seaside, cultural, fishing, ecotourism Muntenia Mountain, sport, business, rural, culinary, cultural, scientific, wellness; Oltenia Cultural, religious, fishing, leisure Transylvania Wellness, mountain, cultural, sport, leisure, rural, religious, scientific, business, culinary, ecotourism Banat Wellness, cultural, scientific, mountain, sport, business, fishing Crişana Wellness, mountain, hunting Table 1. Types of tourism in Romania

Name of tourist attraction Location GPS Coordinates Sphinx Bucegi Mountains 45°24′30″ N, 25°28′13″E Bigăr Waterfall National Park Nerei - Beușnița Gorges 45°02′44″N, 21°57′42″E Babele Bucegi Mountains 45°26.21′N, 25°26.63′E CazaneleDunării Danube Gorges 44°37′N, 22°16′E Danube Delta UNESCO Heritage 45°0′N, 29°0′E Scărişoara Ice Cave Gârda se Sus Village 46°29′23″N, 22°48′35″E Focurile Vii Lopătari Village 45°32′N, 26°34′E VulcaniiNoroioşi (Mud Volcanoes) PâcleleMici 45°21′31″N, 26°42′42″E PodulluiDumnezeu (God’s Bridge) Ponoare 44°58′30″N, 22°45′40″E GroapaRuginoasă ValeaSeacă 46°31′35″N, 22°39′08″E Table 2. Natural tourist attractions in Romania 538

DOI: 10.15308/Synthesis-2015

-537-540 Tourism and hospitality  SYNTHESIS 2015

Name of tourist attraction Location GPS Coordinates TurdaSaltmine Turda 46035′1″N, 23046′35″E Gold Museum Brad 46°12′29″N 22°78′27″E Bran Castle Bran 45030′41″N, 25021′48″E Peleş Castle Sinaia 45º21′34″N, 25º32′30″E ASTRA Museum Sibiu 45047′24″N, 2408′56″E Corvinilor or Huniazilor Castle Hunedoara 45045′2″N, 22053′20″E Monasteries in the North Moldavia and Bucovina Merry Cemetery Săpânţa 47°57′52″N, 23°41′48″E Parliament Palace Bucharest 44025′46″N, 2605′15″E Alba Carolina Fortress Alba Iulia 46°4′5.89″N, 23°34′34.19″E. Wooden churches Maramureş Table 3 Anthropic tourist attractions in Romania

The current number of accommodation facilities and the people created websites, a collection of pages written in HTML accommodation capacity show that Romania has the possibility (HyperTextMarkup Language) and other resource files, acces- to receive tourists. sible only through an URL, logically interconnected by a series of links installed on a server, where a browser through a HTTP/ HTTPS protocol can access, decode and show them in a read- Year Year Year Indicator Unit able form on the computer of every user. 2012 2013 2014

Accommodation Country Number of users (number of persons) Number 5821 6009 6130 facilities China 641601070 USA 279834232 Accommodation Number of 301109 305707 311288 capacity beds India 243198922 Japan 109252912 Table 4 The current accommodation facilities and capacity Brazil 107822831 Source: National Statistics Institute, www.insse.ro, series Tempo online 2015 Russia 84437793 The accommodation facilities are classified according to the Germany 71727551 Romanian legislation in force and can range from hotels to cab- Nigeria 67101452 ins on ships. Great Britain 57075826 Romania is one of the European countries with a series of France 55429382 tourist sites, tourist facilities, tourist products and services, as Table 5 Top countries according to the number of Internet us- well as the specific technical-material base that could meet the ers in 2014 needs of the tourists. Source: www.internetLiveStats.com

3. THE ONLINE ENVIRONMENT AND TOURISM Websites are simpler or more complex and can be classified PROMOTION OF ROMANIA according to the static (they contain HTML and CSS files) and dynamic (they are based on PHP or MySQL databases) pro- We live in an age of the Internet being omnipresent in our gramming. everyday lives. The online environment has created addiction, If the classification criterion is the purpose of the usage, we known as FOMO (the fear of missing out) and it manifests itself differentiate the following sites: as a fear of losing something important. ◆◆ presentation – presents a trading company, a product, At the international level, the ITU (International Telecom- a service; munication Union) monitors the number of Internet users. Ac- ◆◆ corporate presentation – useful for big companies that cording to its statistics for the year 2014, the highest number of present their entire activity; Internet users was registered in China. ◆◆ information – presents a series of information on a cho- In 2014, Romania had 11178477 Internet users, and ac- sen topic; cording to the ITU, it assumed the 41st place. The connection ◆◆ publicity campaign – developed in Flash animation app speed is of maximum 58.7 megabytes/second, which places it in order to promote a product or a service; 6th globally, also due to the recent implementation of the new ◆◆ user-generated content – its content belongs to the visi- and greater performance technology. tors; With so many users around the world (around 3 billion), ◆◆ social networks – used for communication between visi- the Internet has become an information universe. It is used for tors; communication, amusement, marketing purposes. To this end, ◆◆ news – belongs to institutions; 539

DOI: 10.15308/Synthesis-2015

-537-540 SYNTHESIS 2015  Tourism and hospitality

◆◆ blogs – created by a person who writes articles on a cer- Month romaniatourism.com cesavezi.ro tain topic, and that can be commented upon and ana- January 92538 - lysed by the visitors; February 88618 781 ◆◆ online shops – developed for online commerce; March 99746 19181 ◆◆ portals – contain more types of information, news, vid- April 93925 25075 eos; May 106921 31479 ◆◆ browsers – they help people search for information on June 92001 35694 the Internet (World Wide Web) July 103822 50017 A good tourist promotion can be made by creating, main- August 98240 54139 taining and developing such websites according to the purpose. September 99853 25525 The tourism resources and the tourism products are not tan- October 117941 20337 gible, they are immaterial, and this modern technology offers November 97767 16192 the possibility to visualize the chosen destination, find out other December 82912 10555 people’s opinions about its resources and services. Table 6. Unique visitors traffic in 2014, detailed monthly over- The appearance of tourism websites in Romania is a real view Number of persons support for the potential tourists, but also for the companies Source: www.trafic.ro/vizitatori/top-siteuri-turism that operate in this field. Currently, only part of Romania’s tourist sites are known at One can notice that the number of unique visitors was high- both national and international level, which has led to a preoc- er in the case of the website launched by the tourism office in cupation in this direction, and the online environment is pre- New York, and their monthly fluctuations show that the highest ferred. number of visitors is recorded during the holiday season, i.e., in Numerous tourism related websites have been created over May and July in the summer, and in October during the winter. the past years trying to provide the visitors with enough real For the second site, the highest traffic was in summer when information. most people are on holiday. Taking into account the fact that it A complex website created by the Romanian Tourism Of- is given only in Romanian, the number of visitors is limited to fice – North America in New York (the legal representative of Romania’s population. We can say that no website has a high the National Authority for Tourism) presents a series of infor- number of visitors, but they provide information regarding nu- mation regarding Romania and Romanian tourism in order merous tourist attractions in Romania. to raise the awareness among foreign tourists and encourage travels to Romania. 4. CONCLUSIONS The official website of the National Authority for Tourism was created on this website’s platform, its address being www. Globally, the access to the online environment gets easier romania.travel.ro. Its purpose is to attract as many foreign tour- each day, and the number of users is increasing. Thus, the bar- ists as possible, but also to inform Romanians about tourist sites riers caused by the distance, education, culture, language are and destinations. Those interested can download a brochure broken down. The increased visibility provided by websites is „Discover the place you live in” in Romanian, English, German, ideal for tourism promotion in a country. French and Italian. Unfortunately, they are still working on its Romania has a great tourist potential in all its regions, which improvement. is not yet sufficiently known and visited by both Romanian and The first page of both websites presents the logo of Roma- foreign tourists. Hence, there is the necessity to use online pro- nia’s tourist brand that also comprises the slogan „explore the motion through websites. Carpathian garden”. The website romaniatourism.com helps the tourists to be- come conversant with the Romanian tourist sites and make a decision to spend their free time in Romania. In the case of the website cesavezi.ro, the visitors have the opportunity to get to know Romania’s tourist sites, make the decision to visit, and create their travel route via iPhone and iPad apps, and easily identify the tourist site they want to visit. The chances for the increase in the number of visitors in Romania and the income from tourism activities are directly linked to the online environment. Figure 3. Romania’s tourist brand REFERENCES An interesting website created to provide the visitors with a map of Romania’s most attractive tourist sites was launched in CeSaVezi. (2015). Harta Obiective Turistice din România. Re- March 2013. The project CeSaVezi.ro provides an online map trieved April 5, 2015, from http://www.cesavezi.ro with tourist attractions and the presentation of the sites, an information filter, and the possibility to create a travel route, Internet Live Stats. (2015). Retrieved April 5, 2015, from www. live weather forecast, road conditions, accommodation facili- internetLiveStats.com ties, bars and restaurants. A strong point is the possibility to Institutul National de Statistica. (2015). Retrieved April 1, 2015, download for free the application on Android and iOS. A weak from www.insse.ro point, which will be soon eliminated, is related to the presenta- Romania Tourism. (2015). Romania Tourism. Retrieved April 1, tion language, which is Romanian for the time being. 2015, from http://romaniatourism.com/ The number of unique visitors who have accessed the two Trafic. (2015). Top siteuri turism. Retrieved April 15, 2015, from 540 best made websites oscillated in 2014, as can be seen in Table 6. www.trafic.ro/vizitatori/top-siteuri-turism

DOI: 10.15308/Synthesis-2015

-537-540