Finance minister Eugen Teodorovici said in an interview that cutting VAT to 5 percent for the tourism industry is not enough to develop Romania’s tourism market and that we should look towards other countries, such as the Netherlands.
“We’ve cut VAT to 5 percent in tourism. But we have to see what else we’re going to do from now on to really increase tourism levels. We should look at other countries and what they’ve done. (…) the Netherlands could be an example,” Teodorovici said.
Besides historical sights, the Netherlands’ second and third most popular tourist attractions are its legal recreational drugs and prostitution.
According to Reuters, drugs and prostitution have a significant contribution in the Dutch economy – EUR 2.4 billion per year or around 0.4 percent of the country’s GDP.