Romanian resorts that once rivalled major European destinations but have now fallen into disrepair. Examples include:

Saturday, Jan 11, 2025

HotNews

Abandoned resorts across Europe suffer from neglect, privatization issues, and lack of investment.

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[This is an automatically generated summary, for reference only]

While some countries face overtourism, Romania struggles with depopulation and the decay of former major European resorts due to questionable privatizations, lack of investment, and local authority failures. An analysis within the PULSE project examined these declining tourist destinations across Europe. Examples include Vidra and Băile Herculane in Romania, which once rivaled top European spas but fell into disrepair after 1989 or due to private ownership issues. Sângeorz-Băi faces a significant drop in visitors despite having large historical hotels. Internationally, cases like Marina d’Or in Spain and Haludova in Croatia illustrate decline following economic shifts or privatization failures. Italy also sees neglected tourist areas, such as parts of the Adriatic coast and southern regions, prompting new government initiatives to promote sustainable tourism and distribute visitor flows more evenly across the country. The PULSE project is a European initiative promoting cross-border journalistic partnerships.

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PULSE is an initiative for cross-border collaborative journalism in Europe co-funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement n. PO 4500158093.

PULSE is an initiative coordinated by OBCT that has been promoting intensive journalistic cross-border collaborations in Europe since 2024. Its main aim is to help strengthen the European public sphere by reporting on and telling stories from new and diverse perspectives.

At the heart of PULSE are 10 leading national news outlets (Delfi – Lithuania, Deník Referendum – Czechia, Der Standard – Austria, EfSyn – Greece, El Confidencial – Spain, Gazeta Wyborcza – Poland, HotNews – Romania, HVG – Hungary, Il Sole 24 Ore – Italy, Mediapool – Bulgaria) and three transnational organisations, including OBCT , n-ost and Voxeurop .

Additional outlets and journalists are involved as associate partners, including EUobserver , Føljeton (Denmark), H-Alter (Croatia), Levila (Estonia), Rubryka (Ukraine), and The Journal Investigates (Ireland).

PULSE is driven by a sort of virtual transnational newsroom made up of journalists from all the publications involved. It collaboratively produces new journalistic content on European issues on a daily basis, coming in many different languages. The editorial output amounts to over a thousand publications per year, mostly in article form.

PULSE also runs 4 thematic networks open to any European journalist interested in crucial issues such as EU enlargement, relations between the EU and other global powers, the EU’s green transition, or media and the information society. These networks function as online communities and periodically publish calls for pitches.