The response of tourism patronages, after Minister Miruță spoke about the “spikes” given to clients. ANAT: “Unfounded, populist and legally wrong statements”
The National Association of Romanian Travel Agencies (ANAT) stated that the statements regarding the “spikes” in tourism, made by the Minister of Economy and Tourism, Radu Miruţă, are “unfounded, populist and legally wrong”. The statement comes after, in an interview for StartupCafe.ro, Radu Miruță urged Alin Burcea “to lower his voice a little”, “given that the association that you lead has such stings towards tourists”.
“In the last few days, the Minister of Economy, Digitization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, Radu Miruţă, chose an old but effective media recipe: when you don't understand how an industry works, you raise your voice and look for a culprit. His statements, by which he accuses ANAT and the president Alin Burcea of being responsible for the “spikes” in tourism, are unfounded, populist and, beyond these trivialities, legally wrong”, shows in a press release from ANAT.
“An attempt at intimidation”
ANAT believes that the legal responsibility for the operation and supervision of travel agencies belongs exclusively to the Ministry of Economy, Digitization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism (MEDAT), which, within the General Directorate of Tourism, has two specialized structures: the Control Directorate, which verifies compliance with the legislation and manages tourist complaints, and the Authorization and Monitoring Directorate, which grants and renews licenses and classifies tourist units.
Thus, the ministry has all the necessary legal and administrative instruments to prevent situations in which tourists are affected by the insolvency of an agency.
“The institution has implemented a digital reporting system, which should allow officials to analyze the data sent monthly by travel agencies – the mandatory activity declarations, which include the volume of sales (number of packages), the amounts collected in advance from tourists, the amounts paid to suppliers and the values of insolvency insurance policies. Such a system should automatically signal obvious discrepancies, such as the case of an agency that runs millions of euros, but has a policy of minimum insurance, of several thousand or tens of thousands of euros”, reads the ANAT press release.
ANAT states that it is an employers' association and cannot have economic or financial control over its members.
“The role of ANAT is to represent, advise and collaborate with the public authorities and not to replace them! However, when there were problems, the travel agencies – members and non-members of ANAT – were the ones who actually intervened, supporting the affected tourists and finding concrete solutions, while the ministry remained absent and started looking for culprits in Excel”, the statement also reads.
The National Association of Travel Agencies believes that “the public attack launched by Minister Miruţă goes beyond the limits of institutional dialogue and can be considered an attempt to intimidate an organization that exercises a legitimate right of opinion and criticism towards a government policy”.
What Miruța accused the head of ANAT
On Tuesday, in the interview for StartupCafe.ro, the minister launched a series of criticisms towards the businessman Alin Burcea, the president of the patronage of travel agencies, ANAT. Miruță thus referred to a recent scandal in which the Cocktail Holidays travel agency was involved, whose tourists stayed abroad without securing return transportation.
“Mr. Burcea was bothered by the following: your partner (partner as member of ANAT – no) is the one who harassed the tourists who stayed in Turkey and Egypt, with that travel agency, which took people's money, sent them on vacation, but did not give them back the ticket. You can't really come to the public platform to talk about tourism when you are the leader – what is it called – ANAT, an association that practices like this of things. With all due respect!” said the minister.
“The patrons of Cocktail Holidays are in the management of Mr. Burcea's association. He should lower his voice a bit, because it is unbelievable to talk about the tourist's interest, given that the association you lead has such a thorn in the side of tourists. He says about the guarantee fund, which may be partially correct, but at the moment, it does not exist. We are concerned with finding a workable method. But no one like me can convince me, the Minister of Tourism, to applaud such a company, which simply sold illusions. This happened in reality”, Miruță also said in the interview given to StartupCafe.ro on Tuesday.
