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Tourism : C&W Echinox: Romanian hotel market in 2017, the second most attractive in CEE after Poland
The hotel market in Romania has been on a positive trend since 2010, with an increasing number of tourist arrivals and overnight stays, romaniajournal.ro reads.
According to C&W Echinox 1st edition of Romania Hospitality Market Report, the domestic hospitality investment market was the second most attractive in the region after Poland in terms of the transaction sector, following two major sales, with a cumulated value of EUR 183 million. It’s about Radisson Blu complex in Bucharest and Vienna House Easy Airport Bucharest – former Angelo Otopeni.
The prime yield for Bucharest hotels is app. 7.5 percent and the investment activity in the hospitality sector is expected to continue, expanding also across secondary cities.
Since 2009, the number of foreign tourists accommodated by the Romanian hospitality industry more than doubled, reaching 2.75 million people in 2017 (compared to 1.27 mil. in 2009). The major attractions for foreigners were Bucharest (1.2 mil. tourists in 2017), the most important business hub in Romania and a more and more popular city-break destination, followed by Brasov, Sibiu, Timisoara and Cluj.
The positive evolution of this industry has been sustained by the air transportation, with low-cost companies being the fundamental reason for doubling the total air traffic in Romania during the last decade, to 20.3 mil. passengers in 2017. This sector is expected to maintain a double digit growth during the following years, thus increasing the demand for local accommodation facilites.
Over the past ten years, the total hotel capacity in Romania registered a 27 percent increase (reaching the 50 million mark for the first time in 2017), while the total demand (measured by the number of hotel overnight stays) also increased by 22 percent, breaking the barrier of 20 million in 2017.
”Moreover, if we take into account the 2010-2017 period, the increase of the number of overnight stays is even more impressive (57 percent), a fact which undoubtedly shows that the Romanian economic trends have been overwhelmingly positive since the peak years of the economic crisis, allowing for increased consumer spending which has also influenced the hotel industry,” the report reads.
The analysis is focused on the most attractive eight county capital cities in Romania in terms of tourist arrivals during 2017. Overall, these cities attracted app. 4.9 mil. tourists during 2017 (in hotels and other accommodation units), representing almost 41 percent of the total number of tourists in Romania.
Each of these cities offers a different mix of business opportunities and leisure facilities, with a higher quota of business travel in Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Timisoara, while Brasov and Constanta are well-known as the most important mountain and seaside destinations in Romania.
Bucharest is the most developed market for hotels in Romania, with 47 percent of the total number of hotel rooms being affiliated to international chains, C&W Echinox notes. During the next three years, the hotel capacity in Bucharest is expected to increase by at least 10 percent, considering the fact that at least seven hotels with approximately 1,000 rooms are currently planned, under construction or undergoing complete refurbishment.
The planned and under construction hotels target the business community, as it is the case of Courtyard by Marriott developed on Dimitrie Pompeiu Bd. in Bucharest or ISHO Radisson Blu in the mixed-use project ISHO Timisoara, or the leisure tourists (Nymphaea Resort Hotel Oradea or Mercure Hotel & Spa Brasov), while Aviators Park is mostly a transit location, as its future location is situated right across Henri Coanda International Airport from Otopeni. Most of the new hotels are classified at 3-star and 4-star, while Radisson Blu will operate the first 5-star hotel in Timisoara starting with 2020.