The tourism industry of Moldova showed promising signs of constant growth during the last four years owing to the continuous efforts to promote destinations and develop products and modernized policies that support the domestic and inbound tourism. The COVID-19 pandemic then started and affected the whole value chain of the tourism industry in Moldova, said participants in the fourth edition of the ANTRIM Incoming and Domestic Travel Forum, IPN reports.
Doina Nistor, director of the Moldova Competiveness Project that is financed by USAID, the Government of Sweden and the UK, said the tourism sector faces now a challenge and needs to be revitalized. Since 2016, the tourism industry has developed, reaching a turnover of US$ 500 million both in inbound tourism and in outbound tourism. The costs incurred by foreigners in Moldova alone represent about 80% of the US$ 500 million recorded before the crisis. “In Moldova, we have over 4.4 million visitors, 1.7 million of whom are considered tourists. This is the figure for 2018. The rise was supported also by the visa-free regime, association with the EU, tourism promotion,” stated Doina Nistor.
She noted that the losses sustained during the pandemic are great. It was estimated that sales in tourism decreased by 65% to 85%, while the losses came to about US$350 million. In the current conditions, it is important to secure the investments made, for example, in rural pensions and wineries so that none of these businesses goes bankrupt.
“We want to bring the tourism offer to the digital space. We have 18 websites that we develop for rural pensions. We integrate plugins related to online reservations. The tourists are now lazy. They want to do a search on the Internet and to make a reservation directly at pensions without visiting other reservations websites,” explained Doina Nistor. According to her, the reopening of tourism in safe conditions is a priority.
Iulia Costin, director general of the Organization for the Development of the Sector of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, said that among the Organization’s priorities for the tourism sector are the implementation of a program to support rural homes and the offering of assistance to the SMEs in designing local tourism products with high value added so as to develop clusters at sights. They also aim to help the SMEs to modernize and outfit tourist attractions, stopovers and other tourist places. The development of instruments for digitizing tourism is also a priority.
