Poiana Braşov is one of the most famous winter sports resorts in Romania. It is located about 180 km north of Bucharest and is due to be served by a motorway in the near future. Braşov Airport is also scheduled to open within the next few years. This will enlarge the catchment for Braşov and the area around Dracula Castle to include the capital Bucharest. Poiana Braşov, which lies at the foot of the Postăvarul mountain on the border between the Southern and Eastern Carpathians, now has several hotels with a current capacity of 4,000 beds. However, the ski resort created in the 1950s was showing its years, and a new concept was urgently needed to further develop the area to a modern standard.
The first stage of the upgrade was completed at the end of 2011, almost exactly in accordance with the master plan. The project included two chairlifts from the Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group, significantly more width for the ski trails and about 25 hectares of completely new slopes, a snowmaking system covering most of the trails and a reservoir with a capacity of around 120,000 m³. The plans for the new trails, trail modifications and snowmaking installations were supplied by Ingenieurbüro Klenkhart & Partner, while the work on the mountain was handled by a general contractor from Braşov, and the snowmaking system was supplied by Technoalpin. Together with the two new chairlifts, the result is a greatly enhanced ski area with a modern standard of winter sports amenities. With the help of the perfect results achieved with the snowmaking system, the ski area attracted more than 5,000 visitors in the 2012 Christmas season already, and the ski resort was also ideally equipped to host the 2013 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival. Since then, Poiana Braşov has seen an enormous increase in visitor totals, which made it time to think about the second stage of the upgrade project.
