Romanian Skiing

Going into this project, I didn’t even know that people could ski in Romania, so I had a lot of work to do. However, being from an area with some of the best skiing in the world, Colorado, I felt some sort of advantage. For my research, I was aiming at two different categories: specific resorts and their relation to each other as well as specific packages that certain companies offered for European “ski holidays” as they call them. Within the first category of specific resorts I realized that I couldn’t research all of them, so I narrowed my search even more and focused my efforts on five resorts that are relatively close together in the Carpathian Mountain Range. Those resorts included Poiana Brasov, Sinaia, Predeal, Paltinis, and Runcu.

Throughout my research, the same resort kept coming up as the best ski resort in Romania. That resort was Poiana Brasov. While all of the top ski resorts are usually in close proximity to each other due to the natural limit of mountains, this resort stood our for a number of reasons. One way is the that it has the most shuttles from airports to their resort, which plays a huge role in making life easier for your customers as well as saving them money on a rental car. This resort is also great because it has the most resources for tourists in terms of bilingual staff. While the amenities are great, Poiana Brasov also benefits from simply the best skiing in the country of Romania. It has the most runs and the most chairlifts to which some other resorts simply cannot compete. The other resorts still offer great skiing, but lack in other areas such as amenities, amount of runs and chairlifts, and overall hospitality.

Another approach to this research was to find out what made Romania an attractive tourist destination for other tourists from Europe. What I found made this destination preferable to that of Italy or other destinations is that you have the ability to be secluded in the vast wilderness of Romania. When looking into the Italian and Swiss resorts, it seemed as if they had gone “too commercial” and seemingly forgot their roots of catering to the skier, rather than the shopper or the lodge-dweller. It is this down-to-earth approach that Romanian resorts possess that give it an old fashion charm that is hard to find anywhere else in Europe. Another contributor besides the relative absence of corporate logos is the wonderful castles you can enjoy while skiing. In fact, it is possible to ski during the morning and get your late afternoon tour of Dracula’s castle in the same day. Romanian resorts are also appealing because it is still very cheap to ski there, since the Romanian dollar is worth about a third of the US dollar.

The Dracula Experience is just one package offered by Romanian tourism companies. In my research I found a variety of packages that offer log cabin exclusion to five star luxury hotels. There are half –and- half castle and skiing packages, skiing and hiking packages, or just plain skiing packages. It was this variety of entertainment packages that I found appealing, as well as important information for the American Tourist.