Romanian tourism is undergoing a full revival process, in spite of the overlapping crises, and this is widely owed to the holiday vouchers, reintroduced under the emergency ordinance adopted at the end of last year, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Minister Daniel Cadariu said, according to Agerpres.

According to the National Institute of Statistics (INS) data, in the first seven months, 5.907 million tourists chose to spend their holidays in Romania.

Thus, a 25.5 percent increase in the number of visitors was registered as against the same period last year, when Romania saw 4.707 million persons arriving and staying in tourist accommodation structures.

„The statistic data in the first seven months of the year show that Romanian tourism is undergoing a full revival process, in spite of the overlapping crises it has been crossing! This is widely owed to the holiday vouchers, reintroduced under the emergency ordinance adopted at the end of last year and which, besides the contribution to restoring the labour capacity of employees, represents a 252 million euro infusion in the industry. The attention granted to tourism, now a strategic area for the national economy, hasn’t stopped here. 15,000 operators have received compensations worth 800 million euro for the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, money that has helped to restart the engines. Moreover, as we want a health entrepreneurial environment, we have started to eliminate the non-loyal competition, by classifying the apartments owned by natural persons! All these demarches, as well as other initiatives are the results of the collaboration between the ministry, territorial administrative units and the business environment, a partnership that has brought a significant contribution to the 25.5 percent increase in the domestic tourism, as against the figures registered last year,” Entrepreneurship and Tourism Minister Constantin-Daniel Cadariu said.

In total, for the January-July period of the current year, the arrivals of Romanian tourists represented 86.3 percent, totaling 5.097 million people, while the arrivals of foreign tourists registered a percentage of 13.7, namely 809,500 people.

In accommodation structures, 12.445 million nights were registered, increasing by 21.5 percent. The average length of stay was 2.1 days for Romanians and 2.2 days for foreigners.

„In terms of matching the figures from the reference year 2019, the forecast of the World Tourism Organization shows us that after the COVID-19 pandemic the industry can fully recover by 2023-2024, but taking into account the current energy situation and the war at the border, the reality is that we can report only to 2026,” the Minister of Entrepreneurship and Tourism added.

According to the quoted source, most of the foreign visitors come from Germany, Israel and Italy.

Agerpres