Entrepreneurial couple builds guitar-shaped house in Romanian mountain town
Dragoș and Mădălina Obancea, two IT specialists, built a guitar-shaped house in Râșnov, inspired by the atmosphere of the area, in which they invested EUR 50 000. Ziarul Financiar interviewed the couple for their Business from scratch project, a platform dedicated to small entrepreneurs.
The guitar-shaped accommodation in Râșnov is called Symphony Tiny House.
For the construction of the house, the two entrepreneurs were inspired by what happens in the area, namely evenings marked by bonfires and guitar songs.
"We started with the idea of building a holiday house, a tiny house, and we thought for a long time about what it should be, what it should look like. We wanted it to be something different, and here in the area, the guitar concept fits. We are in the mountains, and people come to the cabins to play folk music on the guitar," says Dragoș Obancea.
He and his wife still work in the IT sector, and Symphony Tiny House is the couple's first entrepreneurial venture. The idea for the business began in the winter of last year, and six months ago they started building the house, opening its doors to the public at the beginning of August.
"The construction of the house was more difficult than expected, a guitar has a very demanding shape in terms of technical execution. We faced several challenges during construction because we wanted the house to be practical as well as aesthetically pleasing, to be right in every way, but they were solved along the way," he explains.
The entrepreneurial couple chose this area because they are both originally from Râșnov, and they saw the opportunity for such a cottage in the context of it being a tourist area and people coming to visit it all year round.
In their first month of business, demand has been good and the couple has high expectations for the fall season, with requests already in for September and October.
"We've enjoyed quite a lot of popularity since we started. We got on social media early to promote the building and when we opened a lot of people were interested. We had an average occupancy rate of 90%," says Dragos.
The entrepreneurs want to stabilize their business in the coming period, planning to invest in new facilities such as a playground in the near future, and they are thinking of building more small houses in the form of musical instruments further ahead.
"If things go well, we are thinking of creating one or more similar houses. We like the theme we have found, the musical one, and we’ve had good feedback from tourists,” Dragos adds.
The accommodation’s capacity is four people and the cost for one night's stay is RON 550.
(Photo source: Symphony Tiny House Resort Facebook page)
