Romania Hopes to Attract Foreign Tourists with Print Advertising in Digital Era

While all the other countries live in a digital era and advertise online, Romania still considers print advertising king. We talk about a campaign initiated by the obsolete Romanian Ministry of Economy and Tourism, a bureaucratic institution supposed to engulf local and national tourism promotion, apart from providing proper guidance to favour economic growth.

The campaign initiated by the authorities consisted of placing print advertisements on a dozen rears of Paris buses, which the authorities hoped would make the Paris residents and international tourists consider visiting Romania.

The public clerks from the Ministry of Economy and Tourism boasted about the campaign on Facebook. The specialists consider this is another opportunity for the Romanian Government to spend taxpayers’ money in vain.

It is also estimated that this stage of the campaign will reach over 15 million people, of which approximately 2.5 million are French people with higher education and a large budget for vacations and travel.

Romania’s Ministry of Economy and Tourism Press Release

There is a saying in advertising – no brain, no gain. The authorities’ hopes regarding the campaign results are far-fetched and foolish. To have the impression that this is the reach of those who will see the buses’ rears in Paris during the two weeks during which these collages are printed on the bus rears is not realistic – one cannot possibly count each citizen in Paris as part of the audience, such as not all those who will see the buses will also read the message, understands it and resonate with it, let alone consider travelling to Romania.

More than that, as the buses wear other brands on their sideways, the association with Romania or travel can be utterly confusing, thus diminishing the strength of the message.

While the mainstream media in Romania publish this as a significant success, the situation is different. Romania doesn’t know how to promote its tourism, and the state does not support private initiatives. This is why Romania is way behind all the other countries in the region, including Bulgaria and Hungary, two countries half the size of Romania.

Romania’s image is so poor because of the very politicians and public clerks who decided to spend taxpayers’ money on print advertising in 2023. This is not going to change too soon, unfortunately.