Iasi has no touristic strategy

I just read in Ziua de Iasi that less than 22.000 foreign tourists
visited Iasi in 2007. That's an incredibly low number. As a comparison
New York has 100.000 international tourists daily (35 million per
year).

This is something that makes me very sad. I think that Iasi has a
great touristic potential due to its extraordinary cultural heritage.

Challenges and opportunities.

1. Iasi is not very known in Europe as a holiday destination

A possible solution would be the involvement of the city hall and
other institutions in promoting Iasi as a vacation destination within
some of the European countries. Italians and Germans are the ones that
already visit Iasi in high numbers. The promotion campaign should be
focused on these countries in the first place. Iasi is already a
sister city for more than 5 Italian cities. But German and Italian
tourist usually don't spend to much money in their travels.

On the other hand Iasi would be an interesting destination for
tourists from Nordic countries. This tourists are the biggest spenders
but they have also very big demands. If a touristic agency takes the
challenge to bring Nordic tourists to Iasi can have very high profits,
but needs to make sure that all the quality conditions are met.

2. Iasi is not very accessible

The Iasi international airport will partly solve this issue. If we can
attract 2 or 3 low-cost airline companies to fly from Iasi to several
important European destinations Iasi will become more accessible. I
would suggest that the people from the airport try to sign a deal with
Ryanair, because it's the leading European air company.

The main destinations from Iasi airport will obviously be Italy and
Spain because a lot of people from Iasi region are working there. But
it would be really important to have frequent flights to some
important destinations in other regions in Europe. First of all it
would be excellent if we could have direct flights to London because
this is still the financial capital of Europe. Then would be nice to
have also a connection to Brussels/Dusseldorf because this would
connect us to the most developed and concentrated region in Europe
(Benelux and Western Germany). And last but not least it would be nice
to have a connection with central Europe (ex. Vienna, Prague)