Romania lures Indian wedding tourists with Castle Dracula

"The Romanian Government is focusing on developing the Indian market which is not much aware about the grand scenic beauty, folk art, natural history (that includes the 10-million-year-old skeleton of a "Mammoth" elephant) and castles of Romania that can be compared with the best around the world," according to Marcel Anghel, Director, Romanian National Tourism Office, Beijing.

"Alongside the Indian tourism market, the Romanian Tourism Department is now increasing its tourism focus presently from parts of Eastern Europe to include also countries within Central Europe such as Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, Serbia, Greece, Slovenia and Croatia," ANGHEL, who was in Mumbai for the three-day OTM 2017, said while noting that Indians are among the majority of visitors to European countries and many Indians often carry the 'Schengen' visa which enables them to visit these countries in tandem.

"We are getting around 14,000 Indian visitors per year and these numbers are increasing to 20,000 this year because of our efforts in this OTM 2017. But our presence now at the OTM2017 is to ensure that greater awareness is created in India about other attractions like the lively nightlife in the capital Bucharest and the second largest public administrative building in the world called "House of the People" (The world's biggest building is the Pentagon in the USA) ."

We are looking at targeting Indians interested in +wedding+ tourism , even though many of them come to Bucharest as part of Incentive tourism," he said.

"While however, castle Dracula remains the perennial attraction for people around the world, but we want tourisst worldwide to know that Romania is much more than this. But it is true that the 500-year-old Castle Dracula — and other over 200 12th century castles -- is rented out for weddings at prices that are lower than any in Western Europe," said Thomas Gunendran, Director-International Affairs, Viadora Travel Group.

"Not many people know that the jet engine was invented by a Rumanian named Henry Coanda in 1950, alongside Petrache Dragomir inventing the fountain pen in 1827, and 'Nicolae Paulescu inventing Insulin in 1922, Romania's 3500 years old Scarisoara glacier being the second largest underground glacier in Europe by volume, and also that fact that the first exploration of oil and natural gas in the world took place at a place called 'Ploesti' near Bucharest," he added.