ECONOMICS - February 19th 2005 The hospitality industry in Romania expanded to comprise something completely alien to the country until a few years ago: extreme sports and adventure trips. The untapped resource is likely to bring a few million euros for businesses going into the field, which looks tempting for both the young and the highly trained business people.

By ADRIAN N. IONESCU

The extreme sports are for any season The profit margin for high-end tourist services is 20% to 40%, says Sebastian Ghita, a young graduate of the Academy for Economic Studies, majoring in business management. He is a partner in three companies providing such services, one of which is AlpAccess. He plans to associate highly trained mountain rescue teams to his business venture.

At first Ghita focused his business on providing climbers for the industrial facilities and worked under contract for 2,500 euros with two oil processing companies.

"But the Bucegi or Ciucas Mountains, where we plan to expand our tourism business, are as challenging as the Kilimanjaro Mountaisn are," said Ghita.

He says a quarter of the trip cost goes to the tourist company organizing it; hence the domestic market could cash some three million dollars, if developed.

The market for extreme sports & adventure trips comprises hikes on marked and unmarked routes, mountain cycling, rock climbing with or without special equipment, descending on a rope line, bunji-jumping, survival training, and photo-hunting (meaning using a camera to shot photos of wild life, and not a rifle to shoot down the animals).

Companies like AlpAccess or Valahia Outdoor, from Cluj Napoca city, offer a range of services to tour operators or corporate clients which focus on organizing events for developing the team-building or the leadership qualities.

These companies do not pro