The absence of Romania's team from the Euro 2004 competition has buried a business that could have brought ten million euros to Romanian tourism. Less than 500 Romanians will travel to Portugal this year to watch the soccer games, whereas, had Romania made it to the championships, thousands of Romanians would have crowded the Portuguese stadiums.
"We sold 800 tourism packages for the European Championship in the Netherlands, four years ago. Now, with Romania out of the competition, we did not even come up with an offer - we just sent a few journalists there," says Cristian Mihai Balcescu, chairman of travel agency CMB Travel, based in Bucharest.
Less than 500 Romanians will be among the European Championship spectators this year, according to tour operators. They are generally journalists, athletes, or employees and customers of multinationals operating in Romania, which chose to reward their partners this way.
More than 4,000 Bulgarians are expected to Portugal, though, with 8,000 Russian supporters attending the first game of their team, on Saturday night.
The European Championship is the soccer event of the year and a big source of income for the Portuguese tourism industry. For the finals alone, which will take place on July 4, organisers expect 500,000 visitors from all over the world. This is a lot, especially since Portugal attracts about 1.4 million tourists for the entire summer season.
On the other had, the Romanian tour operators preferred to stay put and did not launch any special packages for this event.
Bucharest-based Happy Tour, one of Romania's main travel agencies, has sold some 100 packages for Euro 2004. "They were generally bought by the big multinationals, such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi Co and Tuborg, which are looking to reward their employees, clients or other business partners," said Nicolae Demetriade, chairman of the agency. "The average stay is one week, and we generally sold tickets to the semifinals and finals," he added.
The average price of a Portugal package is 1,100 euros per person, Demetriade said, as significant discounts are granted for the groups. An individual package would have cost more than 2,000 euros.
"The plane costs about 600 euros, to which we add accommodation, which is rather expensive - about 140-160 euros per night per person. The prices of game tickets range between 80 euros and 400 euros, but we mostly sold tickets to the finals," Demetriade maintained.
Bucharest-based Marshal Tourism has sold no Euro 2004 packages, whereas J'Info Tours mainly sold them to journalists and athletes.
Four years ago, the Romanian Soccer Federation designated an agency that had the right to sell game tickets, but, this year, due to small demand, each agency got the tickets by itself.
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