BUCHAREST, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Romanian government adopted Thursday a decision on the establishment of 20 overseas tourism promotion offices, in a bid to boost inbound tourism to the eastern European country.
According to the decision proposed by the Ministry of Tourism, the 20 offices will be set up in the most important markets for Romanian tourism, and each foreign office will have two employees sent by the ministry.
"The new measure intensifies the efforts to promote Romania as a major tourist destination on an international level," government spokesman Nelu Barbu told a press conference.
The role of foreign representations will be to stimulate the flow of foreign tourists to Romania, to facilitate and create new collaborations for tour operators, and to promote the destination among specialists and tourists through the activities conducted.
The spokesman said that work is currently underway on the study of the countries where the tourism attaches will be sent.
Earlier, Romanian Minister of Tourism Bogdan Trif said that among the 20 offices, "three of them will be in China, because we target the market in Asia."
"Let's not forget that as many as 120 million tourists leave China per year but very few of them arrive in Romania," the minister told a press conference some three months ago, adding that many Chinese tourists know about Romania and would like to come to visit the country, but the promotion of Romanian tourism is missing in Asia.
Romania had eight promotion offices with one employee each operating in the United States, Austria, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and England until the spring of last year, when the then tourism minister decided to abolish these representations as a result of financial irregularities discovered by Court of Auditors.
