RSS
Tourism: Travel tendencies in 2017: destinations attracting Romanians most
More and more Romanians prefer travelling in Europe, to destinations bordering the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, where local culture and experiences are familiar, and also toward Africa and Asia, for exotic, refined holidays. Specialists of the independent, free search engine for travel offers Momondo.ro analysed the Romanians’ travel preferences in 2015 and 2016 and identified the main travel tendencies to be found in 2017.
Romanians are more and more interested to travel in Romania by plane and save money and time, reducing hours of travelling by train or car to one hour by plane. Domestic flights have registered the biggest increase in searches (+664%) ranking first in top of destinations chosen by Romanians in 2016. Flight demands were made for the main airports in the country, in Bucharest, Cluj, Timisoara and Iasi, that thing being possible mainly because of numerous flight offers made by low cost operators in 2016.
“The interest toward domestic tourism grew significantly in 2016. One of the main factors which have contributed to that tendency is the penetration of low cost operators in domestic routes, with flight offers at prices lower than implicit expenses of a trip by common or personal transport means,” said Mirces Giurca, Marketing Manager Momondo Romania.
Closer to the sea and home
Greece is a new destination in the Romanians’ preferences, but it is the European destination with the highest increase in searches (+202%) in 2016 compared to the previous year. This can be explained by political stability following 2015 events (referendum on program of economic austerity) as well as a slight prices decrease. Athens is the main destination preferred by Romanians, searches on momondo.ro recording an increase of 231% in 2016, compared to the previous year.
In 2016, Romanians also looked for flight offers to Cyprus with 105% more than in 2015. “A determining factor can be instability in Turkey, which caused the reorientation of demand toward Cyprus,” Mircea Giurca added.
Sharing key elements like the sea and proximity, Croatia completed the top of rising destinations by +152% in searches in 2016 compared to 2015. The Romanians’ growing interest in Croatia is due mainly to Dubrovnik, a new alternative to the Bulgarian littoral.
Latin familiarity and origins
Significant increases in the Romanians’ searches are also found in the case of Latin countries Portugal and Italy, which remain in the top of preferred destinations, with +90% and +70% in 2016 against 2015.