At the moment, according to estimates and market research, the majority of Romanian tourists spend around 40-50 euros per day on vacation in the country, only a few of them spend 100 euros per day or more.

Exact amounts are difficult to calculate because cash is still widely used.

On the other hand, the majority of foreign tourists (we mean first of all those who come from a platoon of rich countries and real tourists, not people who came for other purposes, especially from neighboring countries, but are registered in the statistics under this name) spend with us around 150-200 EUR/day in the country (the minimum is still around 40-50 EUR/day), foreigners spend more than Romanians on car and guide rentals, agency fees, domestic flights, etc.

At the same time, the average length of rest in the country was less than 3 days, i.e. 2.3 days for Romanian tourists, respectively 2.9 days for foreigners.

Of course, the statistics have their shortcomings, checking the stay in one accommodation unit or tourist region, and not the total length of stay during the year made by a person in the country, in this case we could estimate the annual average of twice the stay, i.e. from 5-7 days, and even three times.

Of course, however, domestic tourism brings significantly lower incomes than inbound tourism, and, in any case, it is certainly limited by socio-economic and demographic realities.

And through the neighbors, i.e. to Bulgaria and Hungary, foreigners spend an average of 1-200 euros/day.

Meanwhile, American tourists spend an average of 10 days in France, spending €400/day (that’s almost €8,000/couple/stay), staggering! Furthermore, these statistics are indeed accurate because they were not obtained by surveying limited samples of respondents or scattered ends of the data, but simply by examining the charging of VISA cards by American tourists at French terminals…

Returning, of the total number of officially registered arrivals to Romania in the peak year of tourism, i.e. 2019 (13.26 million), foreign tourists accounted for only 2.67 million, while Romanians accounted for 10.59 million, the former providing 5.26 million overnight stays , and “ours”, 24 million nights of accommodation.

Looking at the neighbors, we notice that in Poland, foreigners provided 18.7 million nights, in Hungary – 15.8 million, and in a much smaller country like Estonia, 4.4 million nights.

Of the almost 16 million tourists registered in Hungary in 2019, about half (8 million) were foreigners, more than 5 million foreign visitors came to Budapest, which is twice as many as in the whole of Romania!

And if in Hungary the number of visitors from China alone (the country with the most positive dynamics, the middle class capable of visiting Europe has about 700 million people) was 277,000, then in Romania – just over 20,000. (based on 68,000 nights of Chinese stay here, as they were included in the published statistics).

In the same year 2019, tourism receipts officially brought Romania 3.19 billion euros (which means 1.4% of GDP, so in 2021 Romanians will spend approximately 3.3 billion euros on holidays and business trips – of which 80.7% in the country and 19.3% abroad[)soPolandhasaccumulated1225billionEuros(23%ofGDP)andinHungary:651billionEuros(45%ofGDP)[)тодіякуПольщінадходженнянакопичили1225мільярдєвро(23%ВВП)авУгорщині:651млрдЄвро(45%ВВП)[)întimpceînPoloniaîncasărileaucumulat1225mdEuro(23%dinPIB)iarînUngaria:651mdEuro(45%dinPIB)

In another corner of the world, the small country of Bhutan has been applying the concept of “little tourists, big profits” for years, setting a minimum spend of $250 per day per tourist (of which $65 is government tax, and the rest is the cost of accommodation, transportation, food, guide, etc. ), however, a few months ago the state tax was tripled to $200 per day, but the overall minimum threshold was abolished.

And in other “banana” destinations, the income from tourism clearly exceeds the income from domestic Romanian tourism. So, in Tanzania, tourists spend 150-300 dollars a day, about the same as in Tonga or, in another corner of the world, on the Caribbean islands.

Therefore, we should not be surprised that in 2021, Romania was in 53rd place in the Travel and Tourism Development Index prepared by the World Economic Forum, after Bulgaria (41st place), Hungary (37th place), Poland (30th place) or the Czech Republic (26th place out of 117 registered countries).

Or that our country is not at all among the 69 (!) European destinations where National Geographic organizes tours Read the entire article and leave comments on Contributors.ro