Employees in Romania consider vacation vouchers an attractive extra-salary benefit that they would like to find more frequently in the employment offer, shows the data of a market study carried out by the Alliance for Tourism (APT), together with the Professional Association of Issuers of Tickets (APET).

At the same time, many of the companies either do not have the necessary resources to offer it, or are unclear about how it can be implemented.

„Vacation vouchers are an extra-salary benefit that has proven over time to have a real impact for those who received it. They are certainly an essential tool for the rediscovery of Romania as a preferred vacation destination. In addition, the amounts allocated through the holiday vouchers are a relevant boost for the Romanian tourism sector, and a study carried out at the level of the Ministry of Finance shows that the tourism units that opted for the acceptance of holiday vouchers recorded a 9% higher income and employed an average of 4.9% more employees,” explained Elena Pap, president of the Professional Association of Ticket Issuers (APET), according to a press release from the two organizations.

In his turn, Adrian Voican, representative of the Alliance for Tourism, believes that the holiday voucher system has proven extremely useful primarily for employees, who thus have access to at least one vacation per year.

The data collected by the study carried out by APET in partnership with APT shows that, in Romania, some companies choose not to offer holiday vouchers because they do not have the necessary resources. Although an advantageous benefit from a fiscal point of view, offering vouchers involves a significant cost that must be supported by the company from its own resources. However, the trend among private companies is a significantly increasing one, from year to year. According to the study, in the case of companies that chose to offer holiday vouchers to employees, the most important benefit was the fiscal one. The fiscal advantages confer a lower cost and, to the same extent, the increase in the chance that the employer can afford to offer this benefit, the press release reads.

According to the quoted document, most of the time, the amounts that employees receive through holiday vouchers do not cover a full stay. The amounts granted are, on average, 2,200 RON per year, therefore, the employees want their vacation costs to be fully covered. On average, employees want the amounts offered through holiday vouchers to cover a 5-day stay for a family of three (two adults and one child), which includes accommodation and meals in a mid-level unit.

AGERPRES