Another 5,000 rooms and five new luxury hotels in Bucharest alone, investments topping 1.1bn euros, exclusivist chains such as Hyatt, Four Seasons, Sheraton or Kempinski, this is how the Romanian hotel market will look in 2010.
"If we manage to define a coherent national tourism strategy in the meantime and if all the measures related to Romania''s promotion and image identity are accurately shaped up, it would only be reasonable that revenues from the business travel segment alone should reach 3.3%-3.5% of GDP by 2010(...)," says Paul Marasoiu, chairman and CEO of Peacock Hotels, a hotel consultancy. According to him, there will be at least 12 five-star hotels in 2010, all destined to the business segment and another six four-star hotels, added to the already existing ones, which would generate a total of 25 hotels at this level.
"Speaking about the three-star category, there will be 20 hotel properties at most, boasting the typical features of the business segment. As a result, in 2010, the capital city will have, in line with our estimations, business properties in the three-five star range - at least 50 rooms, meeting rooms, state-of-the-art communications technology, services and facilities for business, with the compulsory logical correlation between the plenum hall and rooms for smaller groups to work in the case of four and five-star hotels," added Peacock Hotels representative. Marasoiu anticipates investments worth above one billion euros will target the hospitality industry, namely hotels or pensions, over the following period. "At present, Bucharest has 5,939 rooms available in absolutely all the licensed accommodation structure types, including unrenovated two-star and one-star hotels, urban pensions and motels," says Marasoiu. According to him, by 2010 cities such as Brasov, Constanta, Iasi, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Oradea and Sibiu will have at least one three-four-star hotel. He adds that Iasi, Cluj-Napoca, Sibiu and Constanta are likely to have an over 150 room five-star hotel. Business travel has become the growth engine of an industry currently weighing around 1% of GDP.
The stronger orientation toward business travel was extremely visible in 2005, when tourism revenues rose by 108% against 2004, to 845 million euros. Business travel has accounted for 60-70% in total revenues of the overall tourism industry in the last ten years. In 2005, revenues were double the value registered between 2000-2004, when they stagnated around 400 million euros. In the wake of expenditures made during business trips, foreign tourists for the first time brought more money in Romania in 2005 than Romanians spent in their travels abroad. As Romania is about to join the EU, a rising number of international companies are setting up branches on the domestic market.
Tinu Sebesanu, CEO with Trand Hospitality, the company coordinating the general managers of Cendant chain in Romania says that chains like Hyatt, Kempinsky or Sheraton will enter the market soon.
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