The lack of snow in Romania in December reduced the number of tourists in local ski resorts by some 12,000 people in every weekend compared to December 2014.

Had those tourists come during this period, they would have spent EUR 40-45 per day for accommodation and food, meaning about EUR 500,000 daily, or about EUR 3 million during all the weekends in December. Adding to this the fewer one-day tourists, the Romanian mountain tourism lost almost EUR 4 million in December because of the lack of snow, reports local Profit.ro.

The worst weekend was between December 18 and December 20, because it was impossible to ski, said Marius Mihulin, director of the Poiana Brasov Tourism Organization. The weekend also coincided with the start of the children’s holiday.

In the previous years, the occupancy rate during this weekend exceeded 90%, Mihulin added.

Romania’s mountain resorts have about 56,000 accommodation places, according to the Federation of Romanian Tourism Employers FPTR. However, only 40,000 rooms can be used during the winter, because the other ones don’t have heating systems.

Operators complain that the occupancy rate in mountain resorts has dropped by 30 percentage points compared to other months of December when it snowed, said Dragos Raducan, FPTR first deputy.

editor@romania-insider.com