Festivals and Christmas markets - the stars of Romanian tourism

Theater festivals, music festivals and Christmas markets are the events that managed to bring more foreign tourists to our country last year, even if for 2024 the average number of overnight stays per tourist is 2.2-2.3 days, which would place us at a business or weekend tourism, said yesterday, social-democrat senator Florin Jianu, former president of IMM Romania (ex-CNIPMMR), on the occasion of the launch of the White Paper on Tourism 2024 report.

Florin Jianu stated: "Tourism returned in 2023 to its pre-pandemic level, from 2019, in terms of income and number of tourists. But in order to attract foreign tourists, we need to organize more festivals and events with international participation, where accommodation capacity is fully-booked. In 2024, tourism recorded a new increase compared to 2023 and we found that we have a 75% rate of tourists returning to places they have been before and a 70% rate of tourists choosing new locations in our country. We also found that tourism infrastructure has increased, a chapter in which we are doing well - even if it is not very balanced by area, being more intense in counties such as Constanţa, Braşov and Suceava, but lower in counties such as Giurgiu, Vaslui and Teleorman -, but I believe that there is a need for investments in leisure infrastructure. I have also exposed this need at the Government level, because in certain areas the state must invest in this infrastructure and not leave everything to private companies. Regarding the revenues recorded in 2024 from tourism, they were fluctuating, with areas where increases of between 10% and 30% were recorded, but also areas with a decrease in revenues. The total number of overnight stays last year is around 18 million, which leads to an average number of tourists of 2.2-2.3 nights per tourist, an average that places us in the area of business tourism. Regarding overnight stays, we found very large fluctuations throughout the year. Thus, if in August a maximum of 2 million overnight stays was reached, afterwards we found very steep decreases, which turned into real shocks for investors preparing accommodation units.

• Non-competitive tourism promotion

The former president of IMM Romania also said that the figures regarding incoming are not satisfactory, although a small increase in the number of foreign tourists in our country was recorded compared to 2023, but he stated that he does not believe in the situation presented by the National Institute of Statistics because it would contain a drastic imbalance compared to foreign tourists visiting Bulgaria and Greece.

"90% of foreign tourists in our country are from Europe, but I think we should also rely on tourists from Asia regarding incoming", said Florin Jianu, who also said that he is a supporter of maintaining holiday vouchers, because their use attracted money to the accredited infrastructure, which brought over 30,000 accommodation units in our country out of the black zone.

Regarding tourism promotion, Senator Florin Jianu mentioned that he is preparing a legislative initiative to amend the current law on destination management organizations, a normative act that seems to be non-functional.

Florin Duma, president of IMM Romania, stated that the document published yesterday is a barometer of the problems faced by Romanian tourism, an activity sector that represents 3.3% of the Gross Domestic Product, below the European average of 4.5% of the EU GDP, despite the immense tourism potential that our country has.

Sterică Fudulea, president of the Economic and Social Council, stated that she expects legislative initiatives from the new Parliament to support the tourism promotion of our country.

"Destination Management Organizations must be mandatory, because the money from the tourist tax is for the promotion of tourism and not for small fairs. And we must do that promotion, every day. I have seen a lot of images and videos from tourist areas in other countries every day that each of us promotes by posting these images on different social networks. I would like to promote Romanian tourist destinations in the same way, which are not weekend destinations, but must become destinations for 4-5 days. If we do not promote ourselves, we will not have quality tourism, even if we have good infrastructure and competent employees. You cannot promote tourism in competitive conditions, when Turkey's promotion budget is 300 million euros per year, and Romania's promotion budget is 1 million euros per year (5 million lei)", declared the CES president.

• FRF - contributions of 100 million lei annually to Romanian tourism

During the event, IMM Romania has awarded several awards for tourism promotion, among the awardees are the Craiova City Hall - for the Christmas Fair in the respective locality, the Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism - for the tourism promotion campaign during Euro 2024, the Romanian Football Federation - for the promotion that the national team made to our country at Euro 2024. The award given to the FRF was collected by the technical director Mihai Stoichiţă and by Gabriel Bodescu, deputy general secretary of the respective federation. Gabriel Bodescu stated that the FRF is a stable partner of tourism in Romania, contributing over 100 million lei annually to the HoReCa industry.

"We travel every two weeks or weekly, we stay, we need services, restaurants, laundry, whatever the facilities we visit offer us. We organize no less than 8,000 matches annually - I am talking only about the Romanian Football Federation. Think that we have in this mechanism over 600,000 registered players who move around the country, who need the services offered by this sector of activity, the tourism industry. The reduced VAT, of only 9% in tourism, matters enormously for us, for the budget we have. To show you that we are partners of this industry, I inform you that we are working intensively to organize major football events in our country. We will announce such an event by the end of the current year, for 2026 or 2027, which will bring more foreign tourists to our country", concluded Gabriel Bodescu.