A Eurasian brown bear managed to break into a hotel in Poiana Brasov, one of Romania’s most popular ski resort towns, exploring the building on its own before eventually leaving. According to local staff in hospitality, this is becoming an increasingly common occurrence threatening the region’s tourism industry.
Footage captured inside the property shows the animal moving through a stairwell and nosing open the door to a utility room. According to Observator News, staff called for help while the bear roamed the building, but an emergency dispatcher told them the bear’s presence didn’t qualify as an emergency.
They contacted local police instead, and a mixed unit of police and gendarmes responded but arrived to find the animal had already departed.
Hotel operators say encounters like this have become routine and are driving guests away. Bears in the area have grown increasingly bold, regularly descending from forested terrain and entering buildings in and around the resort.
Poiana Brasov is not alone either. Earlier this month a bear was spotted at a bus stop near a school in the Cluj County village of Dezmir, and a separate incident saw a brown bear captured inside the grounds of the Police Academy in Campina.
Romanian authorities tracking wildlife movement have identified at least 17 adult bears that regularly move through the city of Brasov and venture into the streets of Poiana Brasov in search of food.
Romania’s most recent wildlife census counted nearly 13,000 bears nationwide, more than three times the population that wildlife specialists consider sustainable. Emergency call centers now field more than 2,000 bear-related calls per year, double the figure from a decade ago.
