The interview of the week with Mr. Alexandru Serban – Director of the Bureau of Tourism of Romania in Tokyo – Japan

1.infotravelromania.ro: When it was opened this bureau of tourism?
A.S.: The Bureau of Tokyo was opened in July 1999.

2.infotravelromania.ro: What services offers this information bureau in Tokyo?
A.S.: The main activities are to promote Romanian tourism on the Japanese market and helping Romanian tourist agents who want to enter this market. The promoting activities are divided into two big branches, meaning promoting to the Japanese tourism agencies and to the large public.

3.infotravelromania.ro: How many Romanian tourists are going to Japan and how many Japanese people come in Romania?
A.S.: Almost 11500 Japanese people are coming yearly in Romania; most of them are tourists. This number is increasing every year with 10-20%. A few hundreds of Romanian people come to Japan every year, but I don’t know exactly.

4.infotravelromania.ro: Which are the problems the tourism agencies from Japan are dealing with?
A.S.: There are a lot of problems, most of them being probably the same with those of the agencies abroad. I’ll give you a few examples:
- the low standard of the hotels and services in small cities; the situation is satisfactory only in Bucharest;
- there are not sufficient authorized guiding personal who knows Japanese language; in the present there are a few agencies who offers such services;
- there are no public conveniences near the most important touristy places;
- on the market is increasing the thematic tourism, meaning that the touristy program is around a big event; for example, in Bulgaria this event could be the Festival of the Roses or the yoghourt Tasting (the Japanese people knows that the yoghourt is originary from Bulgaria), in Czech Republic – visiting some of crystal of Bohemia factory. I think that also in Romania there is potential for such “events”, a successfully example being the George Enescu Festival. The traditional events (country feasts, folkloric events and so on) are not decided at the same date every year and the Japanese tourism agent cannot build a touristy program in Romania, so we loose a lot of potential.

5.infotravelromania.ro: What is your advice for the tourism agencies from Romania to succeed in bringing a larger number of Japanese tourists in Romania?
A.S.: It is important that Romanian agents know the level of the requests of Japanese agents, the level of market (which is different from the European market), the way of thinking of Japanese people and also the approach in business meeting with Nippon partners.

6.infotravelromania.ro: What is your opinion about the tourism portal www.infotravelromania.ro?
A.S.: I think it is a very useful instrument for the tourists and also for the agents, because it is updated to the problems about Romanian tourism.

7.infotravelromania.ro: Where can the tourists find out more details about you?
A.S.: The contact coordinates of the bureau are:
Address: Hanawa Bldg 4F. 1-8-5 Kamezawa Sumida-ku, Tokyo Japan
Tel: +81-3-5819-1929
Fax: +81-3-5819-1928
HP: www.romaniatabi.jp
E-mail: info@romaniatabi.jp

JAPAN
Romanian Tourism Promotion Office, Tokyo Office
Hanawa Bldg. 4F, 1-8- 5 Kamezawa Sumida-ku, Tokyo
Tel: