10,000 foreign tourists in the Danube Delta in the first semester

Newsroom 30/07/2014 | 11:23

16,400 tourists visited the Danube Delta in the first half of the year, 10,000 of which were foreigners, up 17.6 percent year on year, according to data from Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve Authority (ARBDD). Although the number of visiting tourists ticked up, Romania’s Delta is still far behind other deltas in Europe in terms of attractiveness, writes zf.ro.

“This summer season is much better than the previous one. We have an extra 10 percent in tourists on the previous year. We’ve received Dutchmen, Germans, Italians, Moldavian. Foreign tourists arrive through tourism agencies or booking sites. The biggest nationality is still Romanians”, according to Petru Harnagia, owner of Delta Paradise complex.

In June, 63 percent of tourists that checked-in in the Danube Delta were foreigners, ARBDD informs. By comparison, foreign tourists last year represented 60 percent of the total.

The Delta attracted 58,000 tourists in 2013, while the Romanian seaside gets that much traffic in a single day. Other European Deltas such as Delta del Po (Italy) or Delta Camarague (France) can reach up to 1 million tourists per year. The Danube Delta suffers from a lack of accomodation: in total there are only about 1,500 – 1,700 for tourists.