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Tourism: About 86% of hotel owners consider coronavirus epidemic is real threat for domestic tourism
About 86% of hotel owners consider coronavirus epidemic is a real threat for domestic tourism, as they have already recorded a considerably lower number of reservations for the months of March and April and last week they registered the first cancellations, according to a study made by hotel reservation site TravelMinit.ro.
According to the same study, the biggest drop of the number of registrations, compared to 2019, was for the Easter period (76.7%), followed by the short holiday on May 1st and the summer season.
The study shows that cancellations came mostly from Romanian tourists (79.1%) and 66% of partners who answered the study consider there is no possibility to sell the rooms unoccupied after cancellations. At the same time, 84.3% of respondents had canceled at least a reservation because of the spreading of coronavirus, 55.2% of vacations canceled being abroad, 36.1% in Romania and 8,7% were both in the country and abroad.
According to the study, in order to increase the number of reservations for April-May, hotel owners are ready to implement flexible reservation policies – 41.3% are willing to extend the payment period for down payments, 36.2% even give up the down payment to increase the number of reservations.
The study was made on a sample of 2,700 persons, between March 10 and 12.
Travelminit.ro is one of the biggest players in the market of hotel reservations in Romania which accepts payment with holiday vouchers. The offer of Travelminist.ro includes 4,000 properties in Romania, among which hotels, pensions, apartments, guest houses, chalets and camping grounds in all areas of the country. The website recorded 620,000 reservations in 2019 and a total value of 13 million euros.