This summer, many Romanians have replaced hotel rooms and chalets with tents, for a "crisis holiday" in the mountains or at the seaside, and this has shown in sales of sports equipment retailers, which announced increases of up to 20% for camping products and accessories.
At the beginning of this year, Ioana Oprica, 24, bought a tent, which she was planning on using in Spain, where, provided that you have a good mattress, conditions in a camping pitch rival those of a 2-star hotel in Romania.
Since then, she has used it three times, in Hungary, at the Sziget Festival on the Obudai Island, and in Romania, at another festival organised close to Bucharest.
"Before, we would look for lodging everywhere we went, and when necessary, we would borrow the tent from friends. But we realised it was much cheaper to buy one, especially since a night in a camping pitch does not cost more than 10 euros," says Oprica, adding that she bought the tent for 200 RON from a Cora hypermarket.
After the sports equipment retailer Decathlon opened a 4,000 square-metre multibrand store in the Militari area of Bucharest in April this year, players on the same segment had to change their strategies and resort to more promotional offers.
"We have sold around 1,000 tents from May until now, a level similar to that recorded last year, but we derived the biggest sales when we operated up to 25% discounts. When large stores entered the local market, our sales stagnated - with customers attracted by the lower prices charged by them," say representatives of Himalaya, one of the stores that specialise in sports equipment, which sells tents costing between 150 RON and 2,000 RON.
The large chains, Decathlon and Hervis, the latter boasting seven stores, in Cluj, Targu-Mures, Sibiu, Oradea and Bucharest, have the benefit of a varied supply and of lower prices, with promoti
