ANALYSIS OF THE ACCOMMODATION OFFER IN CONSTANTA

(ROMANIA)

ARDA, 1st Semester

Carmen Radu, AAOTI II, Master, English line.

January 2019

1. Present demand for Romania by TYPE OF OWNERSHIP, MODE OF

TRANSPORTATION, DESTINATION and TYPE OF CATEGORY OF
COMFORT.
Among the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Romania is
endowed with the richest and most varied natural and man-made
tourist resources, which offer great availability for tourism. This
valuable tourist potential is reflected in various landscapes, a
favorable climate for practicing tourism throughout the year, rich
flora and fauna, historical monuments, art and architecture, popular
traditions, etc. which can satisfy Romanian and foreign tourists.
This essay brings together aspects of the Romanian seaside tourism
situation and how it evolved.
The tourist accommodation- After 2007, the number of tourist
accommodation establishments registered a continuous increase
from 4694 in 2007 to 7905 in 2017.
In terms of space distribution, tourists' arrivals reflect a strong
focus. In recent years, more than 90% of arrivals of foreign tourists
have come from Europe. Asia runs second, with other continents
having very small shares, although for many years, America used to
run second.
As far as the countries are concerned, most of the tourist issue is
concentrated around the neighboring countries of Romania:

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Hungary, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova, Turkey, Germany. This
is explained by the relatively small distances between countries and
by similarities of language, culture, history.
The data refers to the arrivals of tourists at the border points and
not those in the accommodation unit that are much less because
many come to visit relatives, friends.
In foreign travel guides, Romania is well-rated in terms of natural
resources but badly in terms of services and personal safety.
Foreigners think that what we lack is the resorts with high comfort
and facilities.
The main tourist resources in Romania generate the basic forms of
Romanian tourism: mountain tourism, balneary, seaside (recreation,
spa, medical, leisure, sports), cultural, business, etc.
This classification is the most complete as it makes it possible to
find both the preferences of the tourists and the motivation of the
trip, as well as the tourism generated resources. It also considers
two important aspects: on one hand, the fact that the multitude of
forms of tourism is given by the complexity of the tourism potential,
and on the other hand that in the territory these forms complement
each other, contributing to an optimal use of the potential.
The diversification of travel motivations generating demand, led to
the multiplication of forms of tourism. The delimitation of tourism
forms and their grouping according to certain criteria presents both
theoretical and practical importance as it contains elements of
substance of the decisions regarding the development of the tourist
offer and its alignment with the changes in the structure of the
demand.

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Measurement of tourist traffic is intended to provide information on
its size and trends, information needed to establish development
policies in the perspective of the tourist season.
The statistics used by the Ministry of Tourism show the size
(volume) of tourism activity by four basic indicators,among other,
from where I chose namely: type of ownership, mode of
transportation, destination and type of the category of comfort.
Regarding the means of transport used by foreign tourists, roadways
ranked first with over 65% over the years, followed by air, by
waterways and by trains. The explanation is that the road means of
transport are most convenient and are most preferred by tourists.
Naval means is amongst the least frequented due to higher costs.
But we notice an increase in air travel due to the very short travel
time.

2. Constanta
The coastal area is a region of great attraction, especially during the
summer, where many foreign and Romanian tourists spend their
holidays. The resorts available are Navodari, Mamaia, Eforie Nord,
Eforie, Eforie Sud, Costinesti, Olimp, Neptun, Jupiter, Aurora, Venus,
Saturn, Mangalia, 2 Mai and Vama Veche, on a length of 100 km.
Constanta and Mangalia cities attract tourists through their
archaeological objectives (the Roman mosaic in Constanta, the
Callatis fortress in Mangalia).
A characteristic touristic feature of the Romanian seaside is
seasonality (summer) tourism alongside the casual and weekend
tourism. These are organized in collaboration with various partner
companies from abroad and with companies in the country, such as:
Tarom, Navrom and travel agencies.

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The Danube Delta attracts tourists through the exotism of the
landscape offered by the Danube's numerous canals, lakes, beams,
birds, vegetation or the oak forests on Letea and Caraorman, the
fishing villages of Maliuc, Mila 23, Sulina and Sfantu Gheorghe.
It is worth mentioning that in the unorganized tourism, during the
season, the tourists are accommodated in private dwellings near the
tourist resorts.
The Romanian seaside is the most important tourist area,
concentrating almost half of Romania's hotel capacity and about
two-thirds of all accommodation opportunities offered to
international tourism. A special aspect of the economy of Constanta
County is the tourist and balneal valorization of the Romanian
seaside. Compared to the other counties, Constanta presents a
special situation, due to the fact that it combines rail, road, sea and
river transport as well as air transport. Constanta is easily
accessible from Bucharest by plane 1h, by train 3h and by bus 4h.
Regarding the touristic circulation on property forms, the largest
share of tourists chose private ownership. The smallest share of
tourists has the form of cooperative property, the number of tourists
dropping here with about 7,000 tourists.
For tourist traffic by type of unit, the largest number of tourists
chose hotels, which have the highest accommodation capacity. The
situation of foreign tourists on the Romanian seaside is good due to
the fact that the number of foreign tourists has steadily increased in
the last years from. The first country providing tourists for our
seaside is Germany, followed by Italy. There is an increase in French
tourists in recent years. The smallest number of foreign tourists are
registered from Mexico and Central America

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As mentioned, within the resorts on the Black Sea coast, the largest
share of the accommodation network is owned by hotels, a unit
consisting of a building or an ensemble of buildings, which ensures
accommodation in appropriately equipped rooms. A hotel also offers
the possibility of dining, entertainment, and offers a wide or small
range of services to tourists.
The offer of hotels on the Romanian seaside is great, with five star
hotels ("Palm Beach, Scandinavia" in Mamaia), 4 stars ("Palas, Iaki,
Majestic, Savoy" -Mamaia, "Britania" , 3 stars ("Hora" - Saturn,
"Doina" - Neptun), and 2 stars ("Arad, Crisana" - Olimp, "Siret,
National" - Mamaia).
The next form of accommodation, as a percentage, consists of
camping and holiday villages. These have been set up and developed
as a result of the avant-garde that has taken its unorganized and
semi-organized tourism. As a complementary form of
accommodation, it has been able to satisfy satisfactorily the
individual or group demands of tourists with motor vehicles,
followers of a direct contact with nature and a more rigid program.
Practice has shown that these accommodation spaces are much
demanded and are currently insufficient at the peak of the season,
failing to fully satisfy the existing demand.
 Villas and cottages are a complementary form, less used on the
seaside. These are located in isolation or grouped as a holiday
village, being an intermediate form of comfort between the hotel and
the camping.
One of the economic advantages of the main accommodation form,
the hotel, is the capacity utilization factor. This is due first of all to
the fact that it offers the highest degree of comfort to
accommodation during the season, regardless of the weather, and

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the number of tourists staying in the same time period is the
highest.
Seaside hotel units are characterized by the fact that they operate
or can operate during the whole summer season, but only at most
four months of a calendar year. Because of this they suffer an
excessive usage, which leads to additional maintenance costs, to
the maintenance of an insufficiently qualified staff, to the premature
degradation of the construction and related facilities.
However, the hotel remains the only form of accommodation able to
take a massive number of tourists, especially at the peak of the
season, when the tourist affluence is the maximum.
Houses and villas are used around the same time as hotels, but have
a lower usage rate. Faced with the main form of accommodation,
they are also distinguished by lower rates.
The campsite, as a complementary form of accommodation, has the
lowest utilization rate. From practice, it has been found that a
camping site is occupied entirely for a much shorter period of time
than hotels and even villas and cottages. It is more requested at the
peak of the season, when the weather is warm and not rainy. From
an administrative and organizational point of view, the camping is
the last open and the first closed during a summer season,
compared to the other forms of accommodation. The basic
advantage of the campsite is that it requires lower expenses for
placement and maintenance, it is easy to exploit and completes the
demand for accommodation, especially in the case of unorganized
tourism.
Coastal experience has shown that existing camping sites are
inadequate at the peak of the season and often remain unused
towards the end of the season.

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Considering that this form of accommodation is growing more and
more, it is necessary to invest funds for the development of new and
varied forms of camping, capable of meeting the present and future
demand, given that the orientation of the infrastructure development
dynamics is fundamental to the need to increase its functionality.
In the last years, the evolution of accommodation capacity and
number of accommodation units has evolved. 
 In conclusion, it can be noticed that the accommodation services
in Constanta County have developed and diversified, which means
also the development of a suitable technical-material
accommodation base, with adequate facilities, which offers tourists
optimal conditions and fulfills other functions. However, the
accommodation service is dependent on the qualification of the
staff, their proficiency, the organization of the work in the hotel
units. In this context, insufficient accommodation, inappropriate
equipment, inconsistency between the level of comfort offered and
the exigencies of the tourists, as well as the small number of
workers or poor training influence the quality of the touristic
service.
We can say that the leisure and entertainment service in Constanta
County has diversified a lot in recent years with the emergence of
new recreational units. All resorts offer good quality and
quantitative leisure conditions. The higher the supply of services,
the lower the risk of losing customers. For this, the tourism
infrastructure needs to be modernized and diversified.

6. CONCLUSION
The particularly accelerated pace of tourist traffic during the season
peaks makes the tracking of the statistics still have a number of

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deficiencies, especially as regards to the way information is
collected and the source from which the information originates.
It can be appreciated an increase of the tourist traffic that is
manifested in all the Romanian seaside resorts, also increasing the
number of foreign tourists arriving on our seaside, which
demonstrates an increase of the tourist competitiveness of the
Romanian seaside. The increase of tourist traffic, as well as the
changes in its structure are accompanied by the corresponding
evolution of the infrastructure. All this development of tourist traffic,
infrastructure, and services leads first of all to the development of
Romanian tourism.
         For the future, specialists expect the significant
development of the tourism sector with the entry into the Romanian
market of internationally renowned hotel chains such as Radisson,
Hyatt, Kempinsky or Le Meridien. Along with business tourism,
which remains the most developed branch, rural tourism is a sector
in a constantly advancing. In the future, this sector will attract a
higher percentage of tourists.
         In order to support the promotion of the Romanian tourist
offer and to increase the tourist circulation on the Romanian
territory, the project "Tourism Development Strategy 2007 - 2013"
was officially launched with the participation of the professional and
employers' associations in tourism, local and regional authorities in
Romania, Tourism NGOs and international consultants and started
the national branding process through a project supported by the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The
project also includes representatives of professional and employers'
associations in tourism and is linked to the national branding project
initiated by the National Agency for Governmental Strategies. By

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joining the National Geographic Charter for Geotourism, in
September 2005, Romania was declared the third geotourism
destination in the world. A package of draft normative acts
harmonized with the legislation of the European Union (EU)
countries has been developed, which will ensure both the increase
of the quality of the services and the diversification of the offer. At
the same time, it was decided to simplify the legislation in this field,
in collaboration with specialists from the Tourism, Hotels and
Restaurants sector and with the support of experts from the Ministry
of Labor and the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

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Bibliography
 Institutul National de Statistica “National Statistics Institute”, INS,
http://www.insse.ro/cms/ro/publica%C8%9Bii-statistice-%C3%AEn-format-electronic
 Literalul Romanesc “Romanian Seaside”,
https://www.litoralulromanesc.ro/en/cazare_constanta.htm
 Romania Tourism, https://www.romaniatourism.net/beach-resorts/
 European Commission, Partner Country Profiles: Romania,
http://ec.europa.eu/DocsRoom/documents/17561/attachments/40/translations/en/renditio
ns/native
 World Tourism Organization WTO, Romania National Tourism Master Plan 2007 – 2026,
http://old.unibuc.ro/prof/dobre_r_r/docs/res/2014marMaster_Plan_Tourism.pdf

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