Attractive Romania is the first cultural tourism program that brings to light lesser-known heritage objectives | Music-Dance-Arts

Attractive Romania, the national program to support cultural tourism, financed by PNRR, will be launched in May 2024 and will provide tourists with a multimedia platform that will guide them to authentic vacations and original experiences.

From now on, through the specially created landing page start.romania-attractiva.royou can sign up to be the first to find out information about the launch of the platform, consisting of a website and a mobile application.

Thematic routes and hundreds of sights to visit

The program includes hundreds of cultural sights and emphasizes the lesser-known ones from around the country, not yet discovered by the general public. Romania is taking the step that other European countries have already taken, presenting to tourists not only visually spectacular castles, mansions or cathedrals, but also gastronomy, cultural experiences, fortifications, ruins, walls or foundations of architectural or archaeological objectives, which provide important information historically for each country.

The logistical effort and the diversity of the teams involved in the development of the program has only one big winner – Romania, which begins, through the first 12 routes, the construction of the infrastructure for cultural tourism, a niche not approached strategically until now. These are:

• Route of castles – 21 promoted objectives;
• The Curia route from Transylvania – 13 promoted objectives;
• Route of the hills – 11 promoted objectives;
• The route of traditional Romanian gastronomy – 30 promoted objectives;
• Route of fortified churches – 15 promoted objectives;
• Route of wooden churches – 53 promoted objectives;
• The route of the monasteries in the area of ​​Moldova – 18 promoted objectives;
• The Saint Ladislaus Route on the territory of Romania – 20 promoted objectives;
• Route of the Romanian camps – 22 promoted objectives;
• Citadels route – 31 promoted objectives;
• Restoring the cultural landscape of the Danube Delta in order to increase the attractiveness of the area – 8 promoted objectives;
• Route of villages with traditional architecture – 33 promoted objectives.

From May 15, every step tells a story!

Attractive Romania is a map of itineraries, with 12 thematic tourism routes, on which are placed 275 objectives to visit, described in dozens of multimedia materials that tell their story, through historical data, but also through the legends and the people who have made valuable. This is the foundation on which the creative concept of the communication campaign accompanying the program was built. “Every step tells a story” is the essence of the promise to the cultural tourist, where every step creates a connection with the people, the stories they tell or the things they do. The rationale of the concept focuses on the attractive Romania digital platform, the most complex centralizer of stories and legends about Romanian cultural-historical objectives.

The Attractive Romania program is implemented by MIPE together with the professionals of the consortium declared the winner following the tender organized by the ministry in 2022: Terra Building, a Romanian company specialized in road infrastructure, and Eventya, a company specialized in the development of travel and content marketing applications. In the campaign related to the program, the consortium teams up with Zaga Brand, an agency specialized in digital PR.

Guide to authentic experiences

Attractive Romania is the guide that takes you to well-known or lesser-known stories from the country.

“By accessing the materials from the website or mobile application, which make up the Romania Attractiva platform, you will find multimedia information (videos, virtual tours, photo galleries, 3D animations, audio guides) covering 5,000 years of history. You will discover through the more than 2,000 digital materials, including the contribution of the ethnic minorities who contributed to the fabric that creates the uniqueness of the Romanian cultural heritage. The 12 routes of the project reveal both the historical past, from ancient fortresses to villages with traditional architecture, as well as authentic experiences such as cultural landscapes or culinary delights”. declares Ionuț Munteanu, General Manager of Eventya, a company that took part in the realization of the project.

Ionuț Munteanu and the company he leads are behind the development of many other cultural and travel applications in Romania, among the most successful ones being Brașov Tourism App, Sibiu City App, Discover Dolj, Visit Harghita, Visit Covasna, Galati City App, Visit Maramures, Salina Turda App, but also apps for cultural institutions, such as FITS App, Gong Theater or Filarmonica Sibiu App. For online media, Eventya teams up with the agency United Media Services, as a provider of performance marketing services addressed to online audiences in Romania and abroad.

“The relevant experience in running contracts with public authorities doubled by the technical expertise of the team gave us the opportunity to be involved as a leader in a project that expands the scope of our daily activities, but which is undoubtedly a challenge accepted with pleasure “, declares Ștefan Mihai Băcilă, general director of Terra Building.

The national flower of Romania will be integrated into the identity of the cultural tourism project

Attractive Romania will have its own visual identity, which will complete the experience of the tourist’s journey through Romanian history and ancient culture. Beyond the motto of the program, Attractive Romania is the first official program that will highlight Romania’s national flower, the peony. The combined teams of Eventya and the Eventya supplier, Carre Noir, the branding and design studio part of Publicis Groupe Romania, worked on the visual identity.

“The peony, which will be visually integrated into the Attractive Romania program, is a coherent choice, which took into account both the positioning of the cultural tourism promotion program and the desire not to invent symbols forever, in an objective or subjective manner, but to do our duty in taking already legitimate identity elements and bringing them real to the attention of the general public“, declare the representatives of the Terra Building – Eventya Association.

“The Romanian peony is a symbol of Romania through its strong presence in tradition, history, culture, ethnology, ethnography, toponymy and aesthetics, in local celebrations that are dedicated to it throughout the country, but especially through the symbolic charge with which the peony is perceived: it is the flower present in wedding and christening ceremonies, the one with which our grandmothers adorned their gardens for its apotropaic valences (protects family and home), to highlight the power of love that holds people together and to attract health, prosperity and beauty in life. The peony is strong, rich, proud, spectacular and can communicate symbolically in the Attractive Romania program about Romania and Romanians, better than we do with words”says Cristina Turnagiu