INBOUND TOURISM IN ROMANIA: A PROFILE AT REGIONAL LEVEL BASED ON ACCOMMODATION STATISTICS

Abstract

In a practical manner, inbound tourism refers to the foreign visitors undertaking a trip in a reference country. Accommodation statistics provide an evidence of tourists registered in the place where they are spending at least one night in an accommodation establishment. For the time being, accommodation statistics are the only statistics officially produced in Romania characterizing inbound tourism. Using both published and unpublished data (received upon request) from the National Institute of Statistics, the purpose of this paper is to outline the profile of foreign tourists registered in accommodation establishments in each of Romania’s development regions (defined at NUTS II level). It has been revealed that there are some differences between regions in terms of dynamics and of some characteristics (i.e. nationality, typology of accommodation units, seasonality) compared with the national level. These are important features that have to be considered by tourism stakeholders at regional level.