Tourism in Romania

The number of accommodated tourists covers every person, Romanian and foreign, who travels outside their locality of domicile for less than 12 months and stays at least one night at a tourist accommodation unit, with a main purpose of travel other than a remunerated activity at the destination.

An “arrival” is a check-in, not a distinct person: somebody who checks in twice in the same month is counted twice. An “overnight stay” is a 24-hour interval for which a person is registered at an accommodation establishment, even if they actually stayed less; extra beds installed are counted too, if they are paid for.

The monthly figures come only from establishments with at least 10 bed-places. The annual survey goes down to 5 bed-places and therefore covers more units: INS's annual figure is larger than the sum of the months, and the two are not interchangeable. Neither of them covers unregistered accommodation.

The series is strongly seasonal and has a gap that is not an error: in April 2020, under the state of emergency, there were 16,855 arrivals, 98.1% fewer than in April 2019. In those same months, fifteen counties have no published figure at all; they are shown as missing, not as zero, because INS does not say which of the two it is.

From 2021 the figures also include tourists staying in apartments and rooms to let, and INS revised only 2021 and 2022 for it — not the years 2010–2020. Comparisons that cross 2021 compare two different baskets.