Romanian Embassy in Chisinau says the calls to boycott vacation destinations in Romania are detrimental

The Romanian Embassy in Chisinau assured all the travel agencies in Moldova of its availability to collaborate directly with them in order to issue visas for Moldovan citizens who plan to travel for tourist purposes to Romania. The Embassy invites the citizens to address to the Consular Department of the Embassy every working day, from 7 to 10 pm. In a press release quoted by Info-Prim Neo, the Romanian diplomatic mission states that they were surprised to find out about some press releases saying that the Consular Department issues only 50 tourism visas monthly. The Romanian side considers that the calls addressed to the Moldovan citizens to boycott tourist trips to Romania are detrimental. According to the cited source, the Consular Department issued 6862 visas in May, of which 550 visas were for individual tourism, 95 visas - for collective tourism, with 2850 persons enjoying those visas, and also 522 transit visas for tourist purposes were issued. Between June 1 and June 5 the Consular Department issued 1073 visas, of which 85 visas were for individual tourism, 18 visas for collective tourism for 540 persons, and 84 transit visas were issued for tourist purposes. From May 1 to June 5 tourist visas were issued to 4511 Moldovan citizens. “The Consular Department of the Embassy acts on the basis of legislative provisions. The process of issuing tourist visas to Moldovan citizens is transparent and equitable, and it doesn’t favour any individual or collective applicants in the Moldovan market”, the statement by the Romanian Embassy in Chisinau reads. Several days ago, the National Association of Travel Agencies (NATA) encouraged the Moldovan tourists to choose vacation destinations other than Romania, because of certain problems in the process of issuing tourist visas. According to NATA, the Romanian Consulate used to issue only 50 visas per month, though starting on June 1 the local tourist agencies have requested daily 300 visas to Romania. At the same time, NATA announced that this summer the price for tourist packages increased because of the price increases in the utility charges in Romania.