MRDT inaugurated largest investment in ski infrastructure in past 20 years

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Today, 26 December, the Minister of Regional Development and Tourism, Elena Udrea, inaugurated the investment made by the MRDT to expand and modernise the skiable domain in Poiana Brasov ski area, worth 28 million euros.

The project "Development and rehabilitation of the skiable domain in Poiana Brasov – Brasov Municipality, Brasov County" was started in 2009 and consisted of building new slopes, rehabilitating the existing slopes, providing artificial snow machines, building a water storage basin and new cable transport installations as well as  developing the related infrastructure (parking lots, electricity, telecommunications). Thus, as a result of the expansion and modernisation, the skiable area has 63.5 hectares and the total length of the ski slopes reaches about 21,300 metres. Also, the new cable transport installations have a total length of nearly 2,000 metres and the transport capacity reaches 8,500 persons / hour. To produce artificial snow for the slopes, a water storage basin was built northeast of the Ruia Clearing, at the altitude of 1490 meters, with a storage capacity of 120,000 cubic meters.

"A large part of the Romanians would choose ski resorts abroad, so far, because there were no modern resorts in the country that would offer them all modern facilities to spend a relaxing and enjoyable stay. Now, Poiana Brasov can compete with any European resort and I am confident that tourists will prefer to save the price of a plane ticket or the time lost on the way, if they travel by car, to choose a Romanian destination. I am convinced that if we continue to invest at the same pace of the last two years, Romanian mountain resorts will become a magnet not only for Romanian tourists but also for the foreign ones, from the area and from all over Europe. I also said this and when I promised that we would have more and more tourists in Romania and, look, we registered a very good increase in tourism in the first three quarters, by 17%," said Minister Elena Udrea.

The project "Development and rehabilitation of the skiable domain in Poiana Brasov – Brasov Municipality, Brasov County" is part of the series of investments the MRDT runs in the Prahova Valley, with a view to organising the Winter Edition of the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) in 2013.

The MRDT is investing about 400 million lei for the development of tourism and sports infrastructure necessary for this Olympic competitions. Among the projects carried out by the ministry there are the expansion of the skiable domains by over 40 kilometers of new slopes, the building of an Olympic ski jumping trampoline and annexes (cable transport installations, stands, parking lots, etc.), the planning of two biathlon lanes with permanent (winter-summer) use, the construction of three cable transport installations, of two new skating rinks, the provision of artificial snow installations for all slopes and the building of a water storage basin for artificial snowmaking.