Radu Miruță, the new Minister of Economy, has sharply criticized the state’s handling of tourism, describing the current approach as “outdated” and inefficient. In a first public intervention on the subject, the minister pointed to systemic problems ranging from costly and ineffective promotion methods to a total lack of centralized data on foreign tourists, essential for any coherent strategy.
As a first concrete measure, the minister announced to stop a 97.000 lei payment for a set of promotional leaflets that he considered counterproductive.
Main shortcomings identified by the minister:
- Ineffective promotion: Allocating public funds to outdated promotional materials that do not add value and can create a negative image of the country.
- Lack of strategic data: the ministry’s inability to provide an accurate figure of foreign tourists visiting Romania annually. Radu Miruță suggested using modern methods, such as analyzing roaming data, to obtain relevant information.
- Uncompetitive value for money: the minister has openly admitted that tourism services in Romania are often at a disadvantage compared to those in competing countries such as Greece.
- Economic pressure: Revenues from tourism and HoReCa are directly affected by the fall in the purchasing power of the population, which is why maintaining the reduced VAT rate is considered vital for the sector’s survival.
As an immediate plan of action, Radu Miruță has scheduled an emergency meeting with the leaders of major tourism and HoReCa companies. Acknowledging that he is “not a tourism specialist”, the minister said that his objective is to take issues directly from the market operators in order to base future decisions on the realities of the industry, not on bureaucratic perspectives.
His statements mark a break from the traditional discourse and signal a possible reset of the national tourism strategy, based on dialog with the private sector and an honest assessment of the challenges.