Charlie Ottley, the director of the famous documentaries Wild Carpathia and Flavors of Romania, has criticized the Romanian authorities for not being able to do more to attract foreign tourists. Charlie Ottley told an interview for Digi24 that in the last year and a half he has done everything he could to promote Romania and that a strong advertising campaign is needed to bring tourists to the country.
“We desperately need to promote tourism in this country, not just Delta, but the whole country. The government has done absolutely nothing in this regard, it is so useless, it is not even able to organize a government without allying with enemies and others. Not to mention having a Ministry of Tourism to promote this country abroad. The Ministry of Tourism is no longer efficient for I don’t know how long. The latter has been merged with other ministries. It didn’t have the resources to do its job. We were the Ministry of Tourism. In the last year and a half, we were the only ones who did things to promote Romania abroad. This year the ministry didn’t even go to an exhibition, Romania didn’t bother to go,” Ottley said.
The TV producer added that Romania has the opportunity to go to a next level, to advertise itself in the world. “Romania has the opportunity to say, come on, come to a wild area, where you can stay away from people, in remote villages, in secluded castles, in wild forests, in the mountains. I think these could lure plenty of European tourists. And yet, we don’t have anyone to do these things.
We need to do this now, all the other countries do that, Poland, Slovenia, Croatia. They all advertise themselves, not only on BBC World, but also on CNN, everywhere. They do everything to come forward. We need to grab tourists, for they are planning their vacation now for the next year. We must ensure they are coming back, for all hotels and restaurants here are struggling.
There is basically domestic tourism, but there are many other businesses on the verge of collapse due to the pandemic. We must support them, not only by not going abroad and by spending the money here in Romania, but also by encouraging other people to come here and see how beautiful Romania is“, the British producer concluded.