Atra Doftana Complex – architecture, nature, gourmet food

Atra Complex is a very special destination for a short trip or for a longer stay if you are visiting Romania.

Located in Prahova county, Valea Doftanei – Teşila village, at about 80km and 1h and 45 min. from Braşov, and 125km and 2 hours drive from Bucharest, Atra is offering accommodation, a gourmet restaurant, wellness services, outdoor recreation activities and, above all, a spectacular modern architecture posing in an incredible natural landscape, with a view to the Doftana River and the mountains around it, beautiful all year round, no matter the season.

The location is perfect to enjoy both the view of the nature’s beauty and the Atra architecture which was awarded two national prizes at architecture competitions in 2011 and 2012.

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Rent a car and hit the Transfăgărăşan road in Romania

Transfăgărăşan is a really great trip to take, as you can get the best of the Romanian landscape, from daring and wild mountains (sometimes even with wild bears) to pure lakes and waterfalls, medieval fortresses on the top of the mountains, springs and rivers, flowers and snow in the summer, miraculous change from fog to bright sun and absolute blue sky in an hour.

At high altitudes, up to 2041m, slippery road turns and frost are not rare early in the morning, even we’re in the hot Romanian summer.

Trends 2014 – rent a car

If 2013 was not a very productive year either for automobile production or for car rentals, 2014 looks to be the first year in which economic analysts as well the companies, major players in the market expecting a long awaited revival.

The expected growth by the car manufacturing industry in sales are expected to be at least 5 percents while the car rental area expects even car rental increases of over 10%.  Most probably these expectations are a little overestimated although many economic indicators still seems to support.

Over 400 thousands auto units of Romanian cars production were sold in the year just past, the main “culprits” were two successful brands, Dacia and Ford, Ford B-Maxx, Dacia Sandero or Duster being the stars of the year just ended.

How to decrease the expenses with rented cars

There are many individuals, physical or juridical, that would want those rented cars expenses from car rental companies to be lower.

Of course anyone desires to spend less and get better quality services. Lower costs and exceptional quality is the dream of any logistics manager, especially when the budgets for these departments are not that generous.

The question is, in rental car domain, if you can get lower prices and in which terms.

Car Hire in Romania in 2014

Car rental services in Romania began to really take hold after 2004. Romanian prestigious car rental companies began or enhanced their activity between 2004 and 2008, until they too started to feel the effect of economic crisis.

In this six years, the car rental companies made special efforts to stay on an extremely difficult market, especially because the car rental area especially requires serious permanent investments, mostly done ​​by using credit lines.

With all the inherent problems caused by the recession, however, these companies, with competent and authoritative management succeeded even on a dramatic decline in demand for car rental and market pressure for cheaper and more generous  rental deals, managed to withstand and even hoped in 2014 to increase turnover.

Statistical information about rent a car

Over 70% of the tourists who come annually to Bucharest come on business trips, the rest being part of the tourists themselves, pleasure trips, city break or just simply transiting the country`s capital.

Figures provided each year by the National Institute of Statistics,  should be an integral and highly important part in establishing corporate strategies of car rental companies in Bucharest.

Like I mentioned in a previous article, the car hire business growth was modest in 2013 but with hopes for 2014, although the Resort Ministry announced a significant increase in tourists in the year just past, if we look at the data provided by specialists we remark that in fact, car rental followed almost the same curve as tourism growth, an increase of one or maximum two percent.

Rent a car as lifestyle

Rental cars activity in recent years has become somewhat well-defined activity in the former communist bloc, but not so developed as you might think.

Influence of developed Western countries on the economy of Eastern countries had a major impact also on consumer’s perception on lifestyle, the idea of ownership and the idea of ​​”business”.

In countries where democracy was restored in the 90 car rental business has been developed mainly to “pressure” of expatriates in Romania who needed small cars or minivans rental with or without drivers for temporary business activities such as teambuilding famous example.