Conclusiones

After 1989 the legal restrictions were lifted, but the villages of Bran, Moieciu or Albac had little visibility among potential visitors. At the time, mass media and advertising were only budding industries in Romania, with a prime focus on everything Western and little concern with autochthonous products and experiences. Although Bran castle was a known landmark that presented touristic interest, it had little connection with the surrounding villages and nature. Visitors who came to see the castle were usually accommodated in the older and established mountain resorts of Prahova Valley Ð something that to some extent is still going on in the case of foreign tourists. If Bran, Moieciu and Albac are today some of the most popular rural destinations in Romania, this happened with the significant contribution of a group of mediators who, throughout the 90s, worked on connecting the local with the outside world.

Making the business visible on wider stages is a key feature of tourism entrepreneurship (Koscak and OÕRourke 2009:266). In the tourism economy, the actual ÔgoodsÕ produced are bound to particular geographic locations and their ÔcirculationÕ or ÔexchangeÕ depends on the circulation of the consumers. They, however, must be incited to travel and this depends on knowledge about the destination being available and reaching them. This is where various intermediate agents or locals with non-local connections played an important role. On their own, regular villagers had limited access to wider stages of display, particularly in the early days of tourism development. Moreover, in the early 90s, most Romanians had not been exposed to the type of discourse on which rural tourism was built in the West. Even if peasants and villages

were part of the representations on which the Romanian national identity was built, these concepts functioned as static symbols, standing for what Romanians were supposed to be, essentially and existentially, not for what they were meant to do. In other words, the actual lived experience of life in the countryside was not required and indeed it was not even desired by many Romanians, particularly at a time when most of them were drawn by the promises of a Western modern lifestyle.

Generating an inflow of urbanites and foreigners to rural destinations like Bran, Moieciu or Albac relied in the beginning on personal networks. In the area of Bran, the most important contribution came from a network that was quick to grow and achieve its formal identity and structure as ANTREC Ð The National Association of Rural Ecologic and Cultural Tourism. The founders of this organisation were a retired teacher from Bucharest together with her daughter. The two started by encouraging selected locals to host tourists, while at the same time using their urban Ð and many say political Ð connections to bring in groups of visitors to the area. Most locals today acknowledge their merit of bringing visitors to the region and spreading valuable tourism know-how. While they succeeded in establishing long-lasting connections with some villagers, others were reluctant to collaborate with them or renounced their partnership after a while. ANTRECÕs work in Bran and Moieciu is, in fact, quite controversial and deserves closer attention. Since this organisation provided locals with some of the first models for doing tourism, it is important to understand the social and the economic underpinning of this process. Unfortunately, in this I have to rely mostly on what villagers had to say and on mass media accounts, as the founders of the NGO proved difficult to approach. During my first fieldtrip to Bran in 2008, I tried to meet them and I visited the ANTREC office, but since they were away, I could only have a short phone conversation with one of them. After briefly introducing myself and my research interest and mentioning that I had been in Bran for a few days, the response came on a rather hostile tone and I was criticised for my attempt at studying tourism in the area without consulting them first. My second contact with them was in Moieciu in the summer of 2012, when I managed to have a short meeting with the senior lady after showing up at her house unannounced. The interview however was quite brief26 _{as she}

was unwell, so we decided to reschedule it. In the meantime, she promised that she was going to recommend me to guesthouse owners that I could interview. I never managed

26_{I could not find out from her more than the official story of their organisation, with a strong emphasis}

to continue my interview, although I called several times trying to set up a new meeting. I did not get the promised recommendations either. Each time we spoke I was told to call back, until finally she advised me to consult their website for whatever information I needed. When I suggested that perhaps we could meet at the upcoming Rural Tourism Congress, she became very inquisitive, asking how come I am participating, whether I paid the fee and where will I be staying. When we did meet at the Congress, she barely responded to my greeting. Overall, these brief interactions with the founder of ANTREC left me with the feeling that I was relating to a gatekeeper. To push the metaphor further, I am tempted to say that there is no longer a fence attached to the gate being guarded. Today tourism businesses are all too visible, there is a constant inflow of tourists and information about setting up a pensiune is freely available online.

However, this is not to deny the role of this organisation along the years. Apart from providing them with clients, ANTREC has enabled guesthouse owners to travel abroad, take part in tourism fairs and undergo trainings. In 2012 only, through collaborations with companies that provide courses in guesthouse administration, management, cooking or waiting, ANTREC helped over 160 people get credentials that would enable them to work legally in a pensiune. According to its founders, they supported over 100 guesthouse owners who travelled to the Loire Valley in France in order to get inspiration from EuroGites. On the other hand, many pensiune owners suggest that the selection procedure for taking part in such programs was not very transparent and it often came down to the personal preferences of those with important roles in the organisation. ANTREC was also involved in implementing a rating system for rural accommodation similar to the five star classification scheme used for hotels. Although the Ministry of Tourism was responsible with issuing the certificates, ANTREC representatives were responsible with the paperwork and with the on-site assessments. Some of my respondents insisted that villagersÕ requests to have their guesthouses certified were met selectively, according to the foundersÕ personal affinities. As I was led to believe in several occasions by people I interviewed, something influencing such preferences would be oneÕs responsiveness to the senior ladyÕs requests and a general willingness to comply. Some of the younger and more resourceful pensiune owners suggested that they were expected to run different errands or to provide farm products, particularly around Christmas or Easter. It seems that apart from the formal aspect of this network, which nowadays seems to be limited to online advertising in return for a membership fee, ANTREC has a more important informal side. At the time of my fieldwork I heard comments suggesting that the NGO has

connections with the control authorities, people claiming that ANTREC can influence when and how inspections are carried out. Someone even went as far as to argue that the membership tax people pay for joining the network is in fact a Ôprotection taxÕ against the authorities, since it does little in terms of advertising and attracting tourists. Some of the NGOÕs actions suggest that there might be some truth to this Ôconspiracy theoryÕ. Shortly before my arrival in Moieciu, ANTREC had organised a meeting with representatives of the different control bodies in order to instruct people how to prepare for an assessment. It seems however that many pensiuni had been left out and a few people complained to me that only the owners of bigger guesthouses were invited. Incidentally, soon after this meeting, a large-scale control operation was carried out in the village and many of the targets were owners who had not been invited to the meeting.

Among guesthouse owners who are pleased with their collaboration with ANTREC there are a number of families who established closer connections to its founder and who regularly attend social events organised by her:

Miss M [i.e. AntrecÕs senior founder] gathered us, she united us [É] she kept calling us until she united us (Ioana Pop, guesthouse owner, Moieciu).

More recently, this group sought a formal identity and established another association called ÔClubul ANTRECÕ Ð the ANTREC Club. There is a stronger collaboration between owners who belong to this group, they send tourists to each other when they have no vacancies or they might share their employees. They also try to oppose those who rent without being registered and who, they argue, are Ôdamaging the marketÕ. However, this group of owners who declare themselves very pleased with ANTREC is now a minority. Most people I interviewed were generally reserved and sometimes even critical of the organisationÕs management. Many of them describe their partnership with the NGO as an obligation, explaining that they only affiliated because in the beginning ANTREC was responsible with rating guesthouses. The typical complaints concerned the high commission that its founder was charging for bringing in tourists. Others mentioned delayed payments, arguing that after hosting a group sent by ANTREC, they had to wait one year to receive their payment27_{. Finally, it should be stressed that}

27

Evidence from the mass-media suggests that the two ladies might have indeed had an inclination towards keeping more than their fair share of a deal. In 2010, media reports showed that the daughter received a suspended three years prison sentence for embezzlement of European funds in a project she managed during 2003 (Agenția 2010). The EU grant was supposed to finance a two weeks training in France for ten Romanian tourism practitioners. The district attorneys discovered that only six people actually went to France for a programme that lasted only four days and their expenses could only account for one quarter of the funds that were used by ANTREC (idem).

ANTREC developed into a nation-wide organisation with offices in many parts of Romania. The experiences that people in Bran and Moieciu had with this NGO may have to do more with their interactions with its founders figures, than to the workings of the organisation.

Turning to the Apuseni area and to Albac, the NGO that stimulated tourism there in the early 90s was OVR - OpŽration Villages Roumains. As I showed in more detail in the previous chapter, this organisation had a foreign origin and all of its advertising efforts were directed outside the borders of Romania. This has left a mark over the type of tourism inflow that developed in the Apuseni Mountains. The absence of an organisation focused on the domestic tourist market was compensated in Albac by the efforts of the local and the district administration. One of the mayors went to Belgium in 1992 and returned with knowledge and motivation for stimulating tourism, backed by useful connections to a future source of visitors. These connections became more official with the establishing of Ôsister localitiesÕ. Currently, the Rural Tourism Fair organised by the local authorities in partnership with the District Council serves not just as a promotion tool, linking the village to potential visitors from outside, but as a booster of local pride and identity. The event gives people a sense that they are the collective owners of valuable resources that are worth sharing with others. The current mayor has plans to establish a tourism vocational school and an Ôexperimental pensiuneÕ where children would be able to learn the trade (Berindei and Todea 2010:70-71). Finally, thanks to the mayorÕs efforts, Albac was classified as a Ôtouristic resortÕ. According to the legislation, a touristic resort is Ôa locality that has specific touristic functions and where economic activity is exclusively directed towards developing a touristic productÕ (Governmental Decree regarding the organisation of tourism activities in Romania 1998).

While in Albac everyone speaks highly of the local administration, appreciating their efforts to promote tourism, in Bran and Moieciu the situation is in stark contrast. People complain that apart from a general lack of support from the authorities, bad administrative decisions have even created barriers for tourism. For instance, road works for installing the water pipes were carried out in Moieciu during the peak touristic season, causing a nuisance for many tourists. Poor infrastructure is an old problem and people were complaining about it back in 2008, when I first came to Bran. The only exception was one of the villages belonging to Bran, where the road had been asphalted, but I was told that this was because one of the locals was a member of the Romanian Parliament.