Top Gear and the land of the fish fruit

For the past several years numerous efforts were made to sell Romanian touristic destinations to a wider audience abroad, but promoting the Land of Dracula under a coherent umbrella was quite troublesome.  National branding utterly failed for Romania mostly because of the lack of coordination between countless initiatives of various authorities to speak about why this country deserves visiting.

Even as the results of the last campaign promoting the touristic highlights in Romania endorsed by the Romanian Ministry of Tourism are not yet publicly available, one should not expect magic to happen over night. While the stories told by well-known champions Nadia Comaneci, Ilie Nastase and Gheorghe Hagi in Romania – land of choice are expected to raise awareness amid Eurosport and CNN viewers, in the meantime, magic does really exist elsewhere.

Out of the blue, an extremely popular TV show talks about Romania: the premiere of the 14th season of Top Gear was shot in Romania! Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May drove their Aston Martin DBS Volante, Ferrari California and the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder in Bucharest, Mamaia and on the Transfagarasan, and presented Romania’s beautiful scenery and its less pretty sights as well. And as there is no such thing as bad publicity, Top Gear’s take on Romania should have basically convinced tourists to pack and take the next flight to visit the country.

Let’s not forget Anthony Bourdain’s trip to Romania aired on Travel Channel a few months ago. With all the arid disputes that specific episode of No Reservations produced, the attention which Romania received then failed to push forward the tourist industry here and aggravated the parti pris authorities and Romanians alike have.

Romanian tourism lost momentum once, should it be allowed to loose it again?