Report “I look after youth, but I don't see it.” The resorts on the coast, remaining in time and “in rehabilitation” / the only positive example and the Bulgarian strategy

Saturn, Venus and Jupiter have lost most of their tourists this year, several hotel and receptionists say. And those who came, however, are largely pensioners. They say that places have not changed much in recent years. But there is an exception: Olimp resort, which “became one of the coastal jewelry ”. Another example comes from Bulgaria, where a resort has been transformed to keep its tourists.

• This article was carried out within the cross -border project Pulse by Alexandra Nistor and Ștefania Gheorghe (Hotnews, Romania) and Samuil Dimitrov (Mediapool, Bulgaria)

“Only old people,” says Suliman. He is retired and takes care of the parking of three hotels in Saturn. He knows the area of ​​1972. He saw it when he was full of tourists of all ages and members of the Communist Party until 1989.

“I had a job, it was not disorder, they were not drugs. The youth knew how to have fun. Hora hotels, Ballad, Siret had all the disco on the 14th floor, up everything,” says the man.

It shows the upper floors of the hotels and draws the conclusion: “Tourism was then in flower, and everything was cheap. Today you are afraid to go to a table in the city.”

Back in 2025, the man finds that the resorts are now frequented by retirees. “The youth … missing. I look after the youth, but I don't see it. Only old people,” he says.

The same opinion has Lucian Nichita, representative of Mangalia City Hall.

He tells, for Hotnews, how these resorts were once frequented by the crowds: Neptune and Olimp were dedicated to the members of the Communist Party and foreign tourists, Venus and Saturn were working resorts, where the Romanians stayed at the hotels with county names, and Jupiter was “accessible to the Romanian tourists”.

What the resorts look now

In three of the resorts in the south of the coast – Saturn, Venus and Jupiter – old and abandoned constructions are lost among the new, freshly renovated. There are people on the main streets, but few.

In mid -July, after 6:00 pm, tourists go for a walk in the resort.

Live music is heard on terraces, there are hours and there are amusement parks, along with a few souvenirs. The streets are not crowded, and most of the tourists are elderly.

In Venus and Saturn there are walks by way. Three kilometers cost 100 lei, but the cliences started to be expected. “This year there are fewer tourists, because it has no money.”

On the main street in Saturn is quiet, and groups of pensioners are on a walk through the resort.

“It's for the world of my age”

Costică is 67 years old and comes to the Black Sea resorts since he was a child. Now he is at Saturn with his wife.

The two pensioners left Vrancea, but they were thinking before making the four -hour road, because on the television he heard that “the water is too cold for a bath.”

“I like it the most, it is for the world of my age. It is more free, you find everything you need, but I mean the prices are very high near the beach, they are very big. Yesterday I participated in the table at a restaurant that I left with my wife 200 lei. As pensioners, it seems a lot,” says Costică on his vacation.

In addition to prices, he also upset him that “the hotels built under the command of the communists are left in comparison and others are built. They are airy, of a western type, but their quality leaves it to be desired.”

But it also has positive observations: people take more care of beaches and the resorts are cleaner.

“The world goes to a civilization, which I think I will not catch on to the maximum, that I am only 67 years old,” he says, laughing, the man.

Another resort, the same age of tourists. In Venus, Antoaneta and Ion, aged 68 and 70, they came with the nephew. They have only one regret: “You have to work a lot for a vacation.”

I remember that before “I was coming to sea, I consumed 500 lei, because I was coming with tickets. It was clean and more quiet than now. There was no evening not to go to the show, that there were shows,” says Antoaneta.

An explanation for the absence of young people

Why don't young people come to these resorts? The director of the Chapter Hotel in Jupiter, who coordinates the 14 -year -old unit, has an answer.

He says that the south of the coast, the only exception being Vama Veche, is for “another type of tourist” – pensioners and families with children. Such people, he believes, choose the resorts in the South because they are “people who want peace”.

“In the area, unfortunately, there is no nightclub to give it to young people. We have promises from the authorities that they are working on this. It is possible that in the future more festivals or an area of ​​fun are organized,” explains the man. He also adds that the number of tourists has begun to decrease.

At another hotel, Gabriela, who worked over 20 years in Saturn resort, invokes the same problem: there are no places for fun, so they are not young.

Both offer an example to help them: the “Beach, Plese!” Music Festival, which brought both young and foreigners.

The event in Costinești has gathered over 150,000 participants, who stayed in the seaside resorts.

“We had foreign tourists during the” Beach, please! “

The resorts are “in rehabilitation”, say the authorities

The representative of Mangalia City Hall contradicts, however, the idea that the southern resorts have remained forgotten in time.

It also offers a statistic: in 2012, in all these resorts, there were 22 abandoned hotels. “Abandoned, effectively, with locks on them, no one came to be closed,” says Lucian Nichita. “At the moment there are no longer these hotels. On the contrary, they were all bought, they were all renovated or renovated.”

He also talks about the European funds that Mangalia has attracted in recent years: “We have rehabilitated the Saturn resort and a large part of the Neptun resort from European funds. So were the funds available at that time. The cliff in Neptune, Mangalia-Saturn Faleza have been rehabilitated from European funds. Now the European funds have been rehabilitated for the rehabilitation of the infrastructure. Cap-Aurora ”.

He cannot offer an exact amount, but says that Mangalia is approaching 14 million euros with all infrastructure components, in all resorts.

The positive example

In contrast to Saturn, Venus and Jupiter is the Olympus resort, “a smaller resort, where 90% are private properties,” says the representative of Mangalia City Hall.

He explained to us that in Olimp the only main street in the City Hall funds, but there are “many private investors who take care of what they have and look good”.

In Olimp, “they were certainly the most consistent investments”, so here the young people appear more often on the streets.

Vlad, 22 years old, comes with the family in the resort, every year, from 2020. They discovered a resort that they liked. In recent years, many new hotels have appeared, with exemplary services.

“At first it was not so good, nor with the streets, but the resort was developed a lot between 2020 and 2024. One thing that I liked were the beaches, which are small, but very intimate. I never felt crammed, and the prices are very ok. The sea is always very clean.

“Olympus became one of the coastal jewelry” again “

In the evening, the resort is alive. The music from hotels is heard, and tourists are in groups for walking: families with young children, a few teenagers and groups of pensioners. Olympus brings together all.

However, all tourists are heading in the same direction: to the former amphitheater complex – Belvedere, known today as Phoenicia Blue View. At the entrance, the multitude of people strikes you, then a voice of a spectacle.

Until the stage, the road is paved with a fair of seniority, stalls with jewelry, shops with souvenirs and restaurants. The music sounds throughout the complex. The tranquility of Venus, Jupiter and Saturn remains a memory when you reach the “amphitheater”.

“So Galagie is every day, all summer. And the world comes from all resorts,” says a salesman from a jewelry store.

The growth in the popularity of Olympus is also underlined by the spokesman of the National Association of Travel Agencies. “It is a small resort, but Olympus has become one of the coastal jewelry,” says Traian Bădulescu, for the public Hotnews.

Bulgarian example of transformation and adaptation

Over the border, on the Bulgarian coast, another resort can be seen as an example.

Known in Romania under the English name Sunny Beach, Slanchev Bryag resort was built in 1956, after the visit of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

After communism, the hotels were initially rented. Then, the government created a special company to manage all the assets of the resort, in order to privatize them.

In just a few years, the property of the hotels has been responsible for the deprived.

And since then Sunny Beach has become a resort that offers something to any age category. So she is visited by young people, and pensioners. The first ones go for parties and fun. The older ones also have nostalgia with the times of another time.

The resort has a new and an old area. The old part – in the east – is the closest to the sea.

In the new part – western – the constructions are on retrocession lands, where the municipality of Nessebar is responsible for streets and lighting. The municipality also makes the urban plans that establish where and what can be built.

There are also excessive constructions, which is why hotels compete in offers for tourists.

Today, most hotels work on the all-inclusive model, a service that still develops on the Romanian coast.

However, this model is one that attracts a lot of Romanian tourists, which is also confirmed by the hundreds of cars parked through the resort, with numbers from Romania.

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