The President of the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT), Alin Burcea, stated that he will request the representatives of the government coalition to establish the National Tourism Agency, an entity to be placed directly under the Prime Minister’s authority.<\/p>\n
“What we primarily aim for is to strive for the establishment of the National Tourism Agency, because, although we have an exceptional relationship with the current minister and collaborate very well, we should have an authority that deals with all tourism issues. There are 1,000 problems a day that the minister and his team must solve. That is why we want to have a national tourism authority in the next mandate. This is a topic that I do not know if it is necessarily vital, but it is extremely important,” stated Alin Burcea.<\/p>\n
He explained the steps ANAT intends to take to establish a government authority under the Prime Minister, which would deal exclusively with tourism matters.<\/p>\n
“The other employer organizations certainly want the same thing, at least those I have spoken with. We all have this desire because there are many issues. And I am not just referring to the coast. There are common points specific to tourism. There is an Alliance for Tourism, and I said about 10 years ago that a day would come when the president of the Alliance for Tourism would set the meeting time for the minister, and I would like that to happen before I retire. But it is not yet an association; it should be an employer federation. We must all be united,” the new ANAT president added.<\/p>\n
Another topic presented to ANAT members during the General Assembly where he was elected president concerned the establishment of guarantee funds for plane tickets and travel agencies in case of bankruptcy.<\/p>\n
“A second theme of my candidacy is to advance the project of the two funds, which stopped at some point for various reasons\u2014namely, the guarantee fund for airline tickets, which, after what happened with Blue Air, I believe is vital in the current context. We also lost money because agencies, according to ethics, must bring people back if an airline fails. But it should no longer be the case for the Government to pay or for money to be lost, because in that case, 280,000 people lost money. Agencies lost several million euros. My company, for example, lost about 250,000 EUR, and if we add up just the large agencies, it’s several million euros. But if we also add the amounts lost by passengers, it’s several tens of millions of euros,” the ANAT president stated.<\/p>\n
In the case of the guarantee fund for travel agencies, raising the funds would mean an increase in the price of tourist packages, but not a significant one, considering that 2,400 agencies would have to contribute, Alin Burcea explained.<\/p>\n
At the same time, ANAT will request the Government to extend the holiday voucher program to private sector employees.<\/p>\n
The new ANAT president also wants a reduction in VAT for tourist packages offered by travel agencies to 9%. “And I want to fight for something else, because I have an obsession with 9% VAT. It is not an ethical matter; hotels have 9%, restaurants 9%, and agencies 18%. Why? Or at least for domestic tourism, we should have 9%, if we want to support internal tourism,” he emphasized.<\/p>\n
Alin Burcea is the new president of the National Association of Travel Agencies in Romania (ANAT) for the 2024-2026 term, this being the third term as ANAT leader for the founder of the Paralela 45 agency.<\/p>\n
What is the main objective of the proposed National Tourism Agency?<\/strong><\/p>\n The agency is intended to be a dedicated authority under the Prime Minister’s office to manage the strategic challenges and daily operational issues of the tourism sector more effectively.<\/p>\n Why is ANAT proposing a guarantee fund for airline tickets?<\/strong><\/p>\n Following the Blue Air bankruptcy, which cost passengers and travel agencies millions of euros, the fund aims to provide financial protection and ensure passenger repatriation if an airline fails.<\/p>\n What fiscal changes is ANAT advocating for?<\/strong><\/p>\n The association is pushing for a 9% VAT rate for travel packages to match the rates applied to hotels and restaurants, alongside the extension of holiday vouchers to private sector employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The President of the National Association of Travel Agencies (ANAT), Alin Burcea, stated that he will request the representatives of the government coalition to establish the National Tourism Agency, an entity to be placed directly under the Prime Minister’s authority. “What we primarily aim for is to strive for the establishment of the National Tourism…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":90515,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2858],"tags":[3218,3186],"thb-sponsors":[],"class_list":["post-114837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tourism","tag-alin-burcea-en","tag-anat-en"],"article_style_override":"on","post-style":"style2","post_via":"","post-top-image":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/turism-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114837"},{"taxonomy":"thb-sponsors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rhn.ro\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/thb-sponsors?post=114837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}