Tourism and accommodation in Bucharest and a suspicious mind

Bucharest is Romania’s capital and at the same time, the most populous city and the most important industrial and commercial center of the country.
The population of 1,883,425 inhabitants (2011) makes Bucharest the tenth city in population in the European Union.

According to the experts, Bucharest gathers daily over three million people, and in the next five years, this number will exceed four million.

Data from the National Statistics Institute show that the number of foreign tourists who visited Romania in 2014 was approximately 1.9 million and they spent over 5.09 billion lei.
In addition, in the first three months of 2015 the number of tourists was 13% higher than the same period last year.

Although it is visited daily by thousands of tourists, Bucharest has no strategy to attract tourists.

City Hall has recently adopted a decision that will invest 500,000 lei per month to promote the city as a tourist destination, starting this summer. Even if Bucharest has all the interest and all desire to attract more tourists, the authorities have to upgrade many aspects: Metro from Otopeni airport to the center, infrastructure, renovation of historical buildings, tourist offer and so on.
At the population level, young residents of the capital are open, modern, benevolent and most speak English.

Interaction with tourists is interesting and salutary, especially downtown.
Romanians are hospitable people.
For tourists (travelers for site seeing and city brake, businessmen or visitors) accommodation offer is varied, for every style, taste and budget.

Along with hotels and guesthouses, in Bucharest a tourist may find apartments for rent.
Accommodation in such an apartment is more attractive as cost, space at your disposal, easy access to all points of interest, than a hotel accommodation.

Many tourists choose this type of accommodation, reserving apartments for their stay by online bookings portals and through direct bookings.
There are specialized companies that offer accommodation in rental apartments situated downtown, in blocks with no seismic risk, classified apartments and professional services.

But these apartments are located in residential buildings in city center.
And now begins the story: these blocks are occupied and inhabited mostly by elderly people, easily disturbed, non-English speaking, suspicious and peevish.

And though apartments are classified by the National Authority for Tourism, although being reported to the competent authorities and only this in itself brings a situation of safety to the tenants of bloc, a company that offers accommodation in apartment for rent in Bucharest is facing situations like this:

“We will get you to pay for seven persons for maintenance in a 3 bedroom apartment … because you do short term rental accommodation, you may not use the elevator whenever you want,
we will install cameras entering the building because … you bring foreigners and black people, any disturbance in the block is blamed on the rent apartment, you take money for such accommodation so we want you to pay more to maintain the building, we do not like to have foreigners in and out of the block, we want you to remove the floor of the apartment and to put carpets as we are bothered by the heels, why are your guests coming home at 2 am? My dog hears them. Why are they showering at 01 am?.etc ” and many more.

A constant harassment inflicted mainly by a too eager and abusive administrator and for sure not a warm welcome for any visitor.

Considering that tourists who choose to stay in apartments are generally young people or employees of multinational companies.

And they are most respectful, attentive and educated than you might think.

When neighbors or the building manager are really bothered they may address a complaint to police for the public peace being disturbed. But these things almost never happen.

For us never happen in 10 years of activity.
Because is also important how you choose your guests, what kind of tourists do you accept and target.

But if a company is paying taxes, respecting its tourists, maintaining the apartments, respect the neighbors, pays all fees for maintenance the building, it should not a problem that in the block, in the very center, near Unirea Shopping Centre, you choose to accommodated foreign tourists.

It is equally true that renting an apartment for short term rental has a bad reputation in Bucharest, due mainly to those who conduct this business illegally.

Because apartments in these cases are not prepared for tourists, not declared, no one cares about the wishes and rights of neighbors.

But that does not justify obtuse behavior of disrespectful and abusive administrators of the block, mirror opinion of elderly neighbors or simply malevolent.

It should be mentioned that an apartment can turn into accommodation unit only with the consent of the Owners Association.

But also that the income produced by such an apartment is taxable and chargeable by the Romanian state.
If requiring the law a homeowner should have the right to assert their property as they please.

However such agreement from Owners’ Association is very difficult to receive because of prejudices and lack of openness of the tenants in the building … and to make tourism and offer services in such conditions becomes a problem.

Still we hope our society will change and we want to care more to intervene when a neighbor hurts his wife at 3rd floor then when a French guy gets in the elevator.

Maybe it is desirable the cosmopolitan air, the European education and the money that the tourists bring with them when visiting Bucharest and we can give them the chance to capture Bucharest from another perspective than that of a hotel room.