“You can rent a motorhome from every place from Romania” – Tiorean Vasile, manager BookYourCamper.
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My name is Tiorean Vasile, I am the CEO of the company BookYourCamper, which is an online campers booking company and we enter for a short time in this caravan trend in Romania because of a whish and an opportunity that we saw not in Romania, but in others countries, as we all know that we learn to do business from other countries, not from Romania.
Now I will tell you the reason that I believe that the Romanian’s marked need an online campers booking. I personal tried to rent a camper a few years ago; this thing was very complicated, I found only two or three this type of companies in Romania and I did not rent because of many reasons.
So I will tell you why and also the reason that I think to found this online booking platform. The first reason is the distance: it was complicated to me to pick off the camper from Brasov of from Bucharest; so I preferred to pick it from Cluj-Napoca.
Also I had another problem: I had to choose that period that the camper was available, not the period that I prefer to use my vacation… I considered that is not good to me…
So I tell to myself: “ok… it is a problem on this market, I am the client and I can’t find the suitable product!” What was like if I was the client and I would have the possibility to choose the right period, the perfect camper for my and the city that I would like to pick up the camper?”
Then I had the idea to create this online booking platform, of course I have made first researches about the campers’ world from the Europe, New Zeeland, America and Australia, the places where it is a real trend and I saw that there is a lot of this online booking platforms, one of them on a high level. So I started to create the concept of this online booking.
I did not wanted to be just a simple online booking, I wanted to offer to the customers that important information about places they can go and things that they can do.
After we opened this online booking platform we said what if this customers would have the opportunity to travel with us in some certain tours? Then I had the idea to organize some certain tours!
So I will try to tell to you, in a short way, what is about this online booking platform: you can rent a camper from every place from Romania, in which period you prefer, you can also choose the camper model, you can find out where you can travel with this camper by our more than 80 trip ideas, you can choose the country that you want to travel and you can choose from more than 500 camping places, recommended by us from the reviews that they have.
I personal can’t say that I was in this more 500 camps and also my business partners wasn’t there, but I visited more than 100 camps from this.
So this online booking platform offers more than the others online booking platforms can offers.
In the present we have more than 70 campers on our online booking platform. We enter in this business because I saw the opportunity but something it’s still missing.
But when I really entered in this business, I saw that something is really missing: the camps and the caravanning concept in Romania! My last dream is to brig foreign tourists in Romania, not to take Romanian tourists in the other countries.
Back to the incoming idea, we have a wonderful country. But when we try to do this, this amazing country covert in pits and bad roads.
Unfortunately, we have a image problem, in the touristic industry: we went on a three touristic fair at Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt, plus three or four caravanning touristic fair, but the first impression when you say the name “Romania” is bad roads and also the thing that in this country you can be stolen.
So this is our imagine, I think we have a national problem that we have to solve. But I am not so scared of this imagine because it started to be erase by the people that come to visit our country and they say to the other people that the roads aren’t so bad and they also cannot can be stolen.
The reason why I created this online booking platform, is to grow up the incoming, but I can’t do this by myself; I think we all will have to try to do this, even we are in the rental industry, services which are important for the tourists that will come in Romania with they own campers and the camps, which from my point of view are not prepared to welcome this type of tourists.
I think we are not ready for this, we have wonderful places, but we still have to invest in this area; from my point of view, when the foreign people will come here in a a larger number I think the level of services will increase because the providers will be forced to offer higher services.
I think we have to strive to grow this image of country, instead of waiting for videos made by the Ministry of Tourism, I think we will have to try to do something.
It was the first organized tour with 12 campers; It was not easy to convince them that we can do this tour with a distance for more than 6000 kilometers, but in the end we made it, it was a great tour, a fantastic experience: with rented campers, with personal campers, with old campers, with new campers; in this tour, we became a wonderful community after 18 days spending together.
We had in the group children from ages between 2 years old and 12 years old. My kid for 6 years old made a lot of friend in this tour.
The most important thing in this tour was the Boreal Aurora, I dreamed to see it!
This tour was great, the people want to discover this far away countries and this is the reason we would like to organized 16 tours.
To answers at your question “how I see this caravaning thing, in the present, comparing to how was 2 years ago?”I will see in two directions: the campers rental market and the camps development.
The market of the campers rentals seems to be something fantastic, everybody wants to invest in this business because it seems you made a lot of money; and maybe you made a lot of money…I don’t know, I don’t think so. The prices are between 100 euro and 150 euro in the high season, so it seems that you can make a lot of money.
We had a lot of customers which wants to invest in this business and they think like that:“why should I buy an apartment to rent for 400 euro / month when I have the possibility to buy a camper, on the same price and made 3000 euro / month?!”
I answered: Yes, I agree but take into consideration that 1. your apartment will remain the same, your camper will become older; 2. you will rent the apartment all over the year, but the camper will be rent 3 months / year; 3. your camper will need for money for repairs, maintenance and so on. If you will take into consideration all this things, the conclusion is that is not such a big business.
This thing became a trend which help me in my business and make me glad, but I consider this business to be on a grow market. The requests has increased tenfold compared to last year, but this not mean that the market grow up in the same way because there was founded a lot of this type of companies, but unknown.
In conclusion, the campers rental had been developed, but without knowing the balance between the request and the offer. We don’t know yet the tourist profile: who is the client, how many children has, how old is he, what is the budget? There we still have a problem because the Romanian tourist is not like the German one.
Back to the camps subject, I saw the same thing: camps which are on the market, but they did not do something to become better, even they thing that this market will grow by the big number of the foreign tourists that come to them. One of them thinks to get out of this business.
I know at least 5 big camps in Romania which want to get out of this business. Why? Because for them this kind of business can’t bring them money. Some camps will disappear and some new camps will show.
In conclusion, regarding the campers market and the camps market, my opinion is that the things aren’t clear for us, we don’t know who is the customer, how many foreign people visit our country, we don’t know the reason the foreign people come in Romania, we don’t know if they will come back to visit again our country, we don’t have this researches made on this.
We don’t know how much it will grow this campers rental market in Romania. I think that in 2-3 years, maximum 5 years the things will become clear. Till then, we have to stay on the market and we have to survive. My opinion is to continue to invest in this market.”
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