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Tourism in Romania

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Tourism in Romania

In December 2024, Romania's tourism sector had a 6.8% increase in arrivals at accommodation facilities, including hotels, apartments, and rental rooms, compared to December 2023.[1] in authorized lodging facilities, marking increases of 4.5% over 2023[1] Overnight stays also rose by 4.9% during the same period. At border crossing points, Romania recorded 916,100 foreign visitor arrivals, while the number of Romanian residents traveling abroad reached 1,007,600.[1]

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Corvin Castle in Hunedoara
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Peleș Castle in Sinaia
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Bran Castle in Brașov
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Bucegi Mountains in Brașov

In 2024, the National Institute of Statistics reported that Romania recorded over 14 million arrivals[1] in authorized lodging facilities, marking increases of 4.5% over 2023[1] and 7.7% compared to 2019,[1] with overnight stays reaching 30.2 million.[1] Early trends for 2025 continue to reflect strong domestic interest, particularly along the Romanian Black Sea resorts and in emerging sectors such as Ecotourism.[2]

The most visited cities are Bucharest, Constanța, Brașov, Timișoara, Sibiu, Alba-Iulia, Cluj-Napoca, Sighișoara, Iași and Oradea. Natural touristic attractions include the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, and the Black Sea. The most popular destinations for tourists are the capital city Bucharest, Brașov County, Cluj County, Prahova County, Constanța County, Bihor County and Sibiu County.[3]

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Romania

See also: UNESCO
Main article: World Heritage Sites in Romania
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Administrative divisions of Romania
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Biertan (German: Birthälm) Transylvanian Saxon medieval fortified church in Sibiu County, central Romania
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Slătioara secular forest near Câmpulung Moldovenesc in Suceava County, northeastern Romania

Activities

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Protected virgin beach at Corbu, Constanța County, southeastern Romania
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Bicaz Gorge
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Letea Forest

Major tourist attractions

Festivals

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Electric Castle Festival in 2017

Foreign visitors by country

Most visitors arriving to Romania in 2022 were from the following countries:[8]

More information Rank, Country ...
Rank Country Number
1 Ukraine3,292,747
2 Moldova2,607,301
3 Bulgaria1,538,805
4 Hungary864,546
5 Turkey728,255
6 Italy403,485
7 Germany379,910
8 Poland235,485
9 United Kingdom231,741
10 France195,619
11 United States173,334
12 Spain115,730
13 Austria98,571
14 Greece93,196
15 Netherlands77,431
16 Belgium66,121
17 Canada49,693
18 Czech Republic46,390
19 Slovakia44,697
20 Sweden41,991
21 Portugal41,095
22 Ireland37,447
23 Denmark23,403
24 Croatia22,732
25 Lithuania15,788
26 Cyprus14,071
27 Australia11,690
28 Latvia10,589
29 Finland10,282
30 Slovenia8,270
31 Estonia5,135
32 Malta3,757
33 Luxembourg2,599
34 New Zealand2,462
Total foreign12,696,800
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Facilities for disabled travellers

Facilities for disabled travellers in Romania range from patchy to nonexistent. Anyone with mobility problems should go prepared and ideally have local contacts. Although it has made some slow strides towards disabled access since then, and new buildings need to be wheelchair-accessible, implementation has been very poor. In practice Romania remains by and large off-limits to disabled travellers.[9]

Industrial and creative tourism

Summarize
Perspective

Industrial tourism, as a niche of tourism in Romania and as a solution to the restructuring and disappearance of former large industrial sites (mining, metallurgy, heavy industry), takes on interest in the country still slowly, despite the country's join to the European Union in 2007. Even if presently the country is confronted with a long and difficult economic transition, it has a rich industrial and scientific history with many of the world's priorities and still has surviving authentic traditional crafts and rural communities. Limited to some geographic areas and not yet on a large scale, by the means of European funds and projects, a sustainable revival of the traditional sector is supported, which also implies creative tourism participatory activities.[10]

Against this big potential, there are relatively few entities, the majority being state owned, that are organizing, providing or permitting public visits, a main cause of this still being the weak implication and support of many public authorities. Meanwhile, the tourism stakeholders pay a relatively weak attention to the hard core of this niche (industrial heritage, technique, science and living industry), and practically there are not many package offers of this kind on the market, with some notable exceptions: ethnographic and wine tourism, also some rehabilitated industrial and forest narrow railways and steam engines still operating.[citation needed]

Primary attractions

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Turda Salt Mine

According,[11] an industrial and creative tourism attractions web directory for Romania and some neighbouring countries, providing photos and short English descriptions of each objective, the main attractions open to the public are:

  • the national and regional technical and ethnographic museums: the Dimitrie Leonida National Technical Museum and the Aviation Museum in Bucharest, the mining museums in Brad, Petrosani, Rosia Montana, a technical museum in Iasi, the tram museum in Timișoara, the Oil Museum in Ploiesti, the astronomic observatories in Bucharest and Bacau, the village museums from Bucharest, Pitesti, Sibiu, Cluj, Timișoara, Valcea, Suceava;
  • the railway tourism on the recently rehabilitated narrow gauges from Brad, Abrud, Covasna, Moldovita, Agnita, Vaser, the Oravita – Anina mountain railway opened in 1864;
  • the power plant museums from Cernavoda (nuclear), Iron Gates (hydro, on the Danube, 2200 MW, the biggest in European Union), Sadu (hydro, built in 1896), Sinaia (hydro, built in 1899), Grebla – Resita (hydro, built in 1904);
  • factory tours: exception making some food (chocolate, soft drinks, yogurt) factories which provide visits for school children, there are no important companies (car, manufacturing, porcelain, textile, high technology, etc.) to promote such tourist visits. However, some reference enterprises may accept visits at special requests (the Resita Works, metallurgy, heavy machinery, founded in 1771, having a very interesting museum too, The Ruschita Marble Exploitation). A remarkable visit program, started in October 2013, offers the Timisoreana brewery, a factory founded in 1718, with very valuable heritage;
  • industrial heritage: even if valuable, a large majority of the monuments are still abandoned by their owners. However, a few exceptions could be mentioned;
  • motorsports: despite the missing of an international standard infrastructure like raceways, there are national federations organizing events for many categories and racing schools offering participatory courses;
  • the salt mines from: Turda, Praid, Cacica, Slanic Prahova, Ocnele Mari, Ocna Sibiului (salt lakes) are equally famous for their tourism interest (museums, underground entertainment parks) as well as therapeutic exploitation (respiratory diseases)
  • traditional crafts: wood carving, weaving, pottery, glass, embroidery. Many craftsmen preserved the traditions in some village areas from Moldavia, Transylvania and Oltenia. The majority are only selling their products on local markets, but they begin to organize and a few open their workshops to the tourists too;
  • wineries: some vineyards have incredible landscapes and the wines produced here have a well established and long tradition. Wine tourism provides presentations of the technologies and the storage caves, and is well developed in Romania. Famous big wineries: Murfatlar, Cotnari, Dragasani, Recaș, Prahova Valley, Odobesti, Husi, Cricova (near Chisinau, in the Republic of Moldova, is huge, with about 80 kilometres of tunnels and caves)

Infrastructure

There are 16 international commercial airports in service today. Overall, airports in the country were transited in 2016 by 16.4 million passengers. The largest number of passengers was attracted by Bucharest's Henri Coandă International Airport, which closed the year with a traffic of almost 11 million passengers.[12]

Romania also has a large network of railways, CIA World Factbook lists Romania with the 22nd largest railway network in the world.[13] The railway network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks.

See also

References

Further reading

External links

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