Romanian tourism growth is among fastest in Europe, but few non-residents visit

Last summer's hotel bookings were up across the EU, while Romania was well ahead of the pack, even with a low ratio of foreigners among tourists. An extra 35 million hotel nights were spent in the EU's hotels and holiday accommodation, equaling a 4.8 percent increase on 2010's summer season, according to the latest data from Eurostat, the EU's statistics office. Figures for Romania, however, were well ahead of the pack, with a 17.5 percent increase on summer 2010, the second biggest rise in the EU after neighboring Bulgaria ( 21.1 percent ).

Tourists checked in for more than 8.9 million hotel nights between June and September last year, compared to 7.6 million in 2010. But the vast majority of those tourists were Romanian residents. Despite having one of the best figures for growth, Romania had the lowest percentage of non-residents staying in the country's hotels. Just 14.7 percent of holiday accommodation guests were resident outside Romania, well below the 48 percent EU average, and far behind many EU countries that had 70, 80 or even 90 percent plus non-resident hotel guests. In Bulgaria, 79 percent of hotel guests were not resident in the country. The figure from Romania has slipped slightly since summer 2010, when 15.4 percent of hotel guests were non-residents. Total numbers of residents and non-residents were up last year in Romania, but the increase in hotel stays by residents was greater, thus causing the slip in percentage of non-residents. A few countries missed out on what was in general a good summer for EU tourism, Italy and Malta both recorded drops in hotel occupancy, down 1.2 and 1.9 percent respectively. Spain, Italy, Germany, France and the UK accounted for over 70 percent of the total nights spent in EU hotels last summer, while the top destinations for non- EU residents were Spain, Italy and Greece, together accounting for more than 50 percent of hotel stays by non EU tourists. Liam Lever, liam@romania-insider.com