ON-LINE TOURISM EXTENDS

According to the official web site www.turism.md of the Department of Tourism Development, of 200 travel agencies in the Republic of Moldova, a number of only 50 agencies are promoting tourism and their services on-line.

The number, however, is continuously growing – during the last year 20 tourist sites have appeared and a number of those existing have upgraded their graphic image and have increased the volume of the information posted.

According to the experts’ forecast, by 2007 the sale revenue of the tourist services via Internet will form about 30% of the total amount of services.


ON-LINE activity


The experts also declare that there are only 300 tourist sites that are really active, while the rest haven’t been recently upgraded and are working to the extent of their possibilities. However, according to the estimations made by the travel agencies managers, on-line tourism in Moldova is quite a dynamic sphere of activity.

The changes made in this domain during the last year are obvious. For example, the travel agencies started to pay more attention to the on-line services and to diversify them – as in selling air-tickets, booking hotel rooms, transportation services, etc.

”Elite” tourism

Recent tendencies of the sphere have come to developing the “elite” tourism. A majority of the travel agencies pay great attention to the wine tourism – visiting the famous underground wine galleries, visiting wine cellars and tasting high-quality and collection wines. The experts declare that the request in this sphere comes mostly from the foreign tourists.

According to Vladimir Macarov, manager of the www.turism.md site, there will be interesting offers in the rural tourism sphere. Moldavian province has become attractive not only for foreigners, but for Moldova’s citizens.

Also, beauty tourism has a good future. First, because the quality of esthetic medicine services is very high in Moldova and the prices for them are ten-times lower compared to the prices in the Western countries.

Macarov declares that intensifying cooperation is expected via Internet between the local travel agencies and the international tour-operators as TUI, Olimar, Dertour, and TomasCook. In this case, new offers of world cruises will appear.

At the same time, from 2004 it has been practiced to post on the internet information on business tourism offers for foreigners, that imply services of organizing and visiting exhibitions, seminars, conferences and symposiums on the territory of CIS countries and in Europe.

Altogether, this proves a rapid development and, most important, different spheres of the local on-line tourism.

www.turism.md

The first sites of the travel agencies have appeared 7 years ago. In 1998, Transaero Tours Moldova (today Aerotour) and Voiaj International have simultaneously created a site each for promoting tourist services. Since then, their number has considerably increased. Some of the sites have disappeared with the dissolving of the travel agencies and others, like the 2 above-mentioned are still successfully active.

The most important site, that unites all of them, is www.turism.md. This was created and started its activity in September 2001 in the frames of the UNDP Moldova Project of Sustainable Tourism Development and has been implemented by the Department of Tourism Development.

There are up to 500-600 visitors of the site daily, and this year’s number comes up to 151 thousands. „It is a good number for one site and for such a small country”, says Vladimir Macarov.
Macarov also declares that the sites that really work with the purpose of promoting their products are travel agencies like: Aerotour, Canonic Tur, Casa Vinului, Corina, Moldova-Tur, Robinson, Solei-turism, and Voiaj International.

On-line orders

Unfortunately, today, the most famous way to order tourist services remains the telephone and the fax, and less the Internet (e-mail). Most of the requests by e-mail (70-80%) come from foreigners, while only 15% of the Moldavian tourist order by e-mail. At the same time, payment by transfer is not effected.
Experts affirm that this could be possible in the next 3-5 years, when payment sector by bank cards is developing.

Dina Zaiat
ECO
Economic weekly of the Jurnal de Chisinau newspaper
No. 18, March 10, 2005