A look back at the 2016 tourist year

Daniel Onea, 05.01.2017, 14:01

Welcome to the
first installment this year in our regular feature Traveler’s Guide. Today we
will take a look back, to see the most
interesting holiday destinations in Romania in 2016. We tried to come up with
offers for all tastes and pockets, for those looking for adventure as well as
for those who are more into leisure activities, at the seaside or in the
mountains. We guided you off the beaten track or to established tourist
destinations, all perfectly fitting into a holiday to remember.

2016 began with an
invitation we extended to you for Gorj County. Boasting fairy tale scenery, a
rich history and legends to remember, Gorj County is the place where many
personalities rose to prominence. Among them, the great sculptor Constantin
Brancusi. It was the final installment in our prize-winning contest series
titled A Contemporary of Constantin Brancusi: Constantin Antonovici. The
contest aroused your interest and we received 120 correct and complete answers
to our questions. The winners of the contest were Khalil Abdel-Kader and
Goumidi Mohamed, both from Algeria. They took part in the contest, provided
correct answers to our questions and won a seven-day trip to Gorj County,
full-board, six-night accommodation over April 15 – 30, 2016.

Alongside
Transylvania, Bukovina, Maramures and the Danube Delta, the capital city
Bucharest has it own place among foreign tourists’ preferences. Statistics show
that in the last 15 years, Bucharest’s accommodation capacity has tripled.
Romania’s capital city has become a city break destination also thanks to the
eight low-cost companies operating on Otopeni Airport. There are around 90
direct flights linking Bucharest to 90 cities, which makes it possible for
Romania’s capital city to be included on the list of European capitals as a
city break destination. In February, we usually target those who love winter
sports, so we took you to two of Romania’s most beautiful mountain resorts,
Vârtop and Arieşeni. Located at only a few kilometers from one another, they
are all replete with snow and guest houses ready to welcome guests with
top-quality services and food.

Around 300
companies took part in the 35th edition of Romania’s International
Tourism Fair, held over February 25 and 28 in Bucharest. Just as it was
expected, tour operators were present with lots of early booking and last
minute offers for all tourist areas in Romania. Spa tourism was intensely promoted at the aforementioned edition
of the fair. We also told you about other destinations in the country, such as
Iasi, Sighisoara and the Danube Delta. In March we invited you on a trip around
Romania’s villages. Scattered in the highlands, on mountain tops, on the top of
the hills or in the plains, Romania’s villages always make perfect destinations
for those interested in a quiet holiday. One of the world’s most prestigious
tourist guides, Best Travel 2016, edited by Lonely Planet, provided a rankings
of the world’s top ten regions, with Transylvania coming in first. Traditions,
nature, cuisine, routes for all sorts of trips, you can find all that in the
region, which is famous mainly for its rural part.

In the spring of
2016 we invited you to the city of magnolias, Timisoara, in western Romania.
It’s a city rich in period buildings, museums, open-air concerts, fairy tale
squares as well as a historical city center which is unique in Romania, made of
three urban squares, each of them with their own architectural style. It’s
often referred to as Europe in miniature, a settlement where ethnic Romanians,
Germans, Serbs, Croatians, Slovaks, Hungarians and Bulgarians all live in
harmony.

In late April, we
talked about Maramures and Bukovina as two favorite destinations for those who
choose to spend the Orthodox Easter in Romania. It was also then that you found
out about the offers on the Romanian Black Sea Coast resorts and spas.

In June we headed
towards the Danube Delta. It is a destination for the active type of people,
for those who love nature. A stay in the Delta may even include trips by
helicopter, by bicycle, speed-boat trips or rowing trips with the local long
boat, taking you to canals and waterways. Then we went to the Corvins’ Castle
in Hunedoara, from where we followed in Count Dracula’s footsteps, in
Bistrita-Nasaud. That unique trip was offered to you as part of another
prize-wining contest organized by radio Romania International, titled Holiday
in Bistriţa-Năsăud. This contest too aroused your interest as we received 352
correct and complete answers. Winner of the contest was Liu Faijan of Shenzhen,
China. Our listener and his wife were treated to an 8-day trip, accommodation
and full board for seven nights, over
September 15 and 30, 2016, in Bistrita-Nasaud County.

Then we headed
towards the Romanian seaside. The big novelty of the summer season in 2016 was
the fact that beaches in the southern part of the coast were expanded with more
than thirty hectares. As for those who didn’t quite feel up to spending a whole
day on the beach, as an alternative to that we pointed to amusement parks,
horse riding trips or trips to Dobrogea and the Danube Delta.

In the autumn of
2016, we invited you to get to know Vatra Dornei, dubbed the pearl of
Bukovina, a resort lying at 800 meters above the sea level. The place is
perfect for those who love mountain sports, but also for those who feel like
spending their holiday in an oasis of peace and tranquility. Here you can go
rafting, mountain biking, do some extreme biking, paragliding, you can go
skiing or you can just take a walk around the park of the resort only to enjoy
the strongly ionized air. In the same period, we also invited you to the
western area of the Southern Carpathians, in the Tarcu Mountains, the perfect
place for the reintroduction of aurochs to the wild. We recall the aurochs are
a species that had disappeared for more than 200 years.

Those of you who
wanted to find out the latest on agro tourism, or about religious and healing
tourism in Valcea, were invited to a county for all seasons, with recognized
tourist assets. Toward the end of the year we told you about Romania being one
of the world’s biggest salt producers and we took you to some of Romania’s most
famous salt mines. And of course, rounding off 2016 were Christmas and New
Year’s Eve offers.

It was a plentiful
year, in terms of tourist offers. We shall stick to that tradition in 2017,
when our trips will be at least as interesting and unusual as those we took you
on in 2016. A Happy New Year to you all
!

(Translated by Eugen Nasta)