Foreign tourists in Romania up by 10.6 pct to 2.47 mln in 2016

Newsroom 02/02/2017 | 14:45

The number of foreign tourists in Romania went up by 10.6 percent in 2016, reaching 2.47 million, a peak since the last decades, considering the attractiveness of the country for tourists from Europe, Asia and Northern America, says the data of the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

In the last years, the number of foreign tourists in Romania grew rapidly to 1.71 million in 2013, to 1.91 million in 2014 and 2.23 million in 2015, according to News.ro.

In December 2016, 709,400 tourists were registered in Romania, a growth by 8.2 percent compared with December 2015, out of which 567,000 Romanians, with a share of 79.9 percent out of the total and the rest of them, 142,000 were foreign tourists.

Most of the foreign tourists (1.85 million) came from Europe in 2016, mainly from the European Union member states (1.58 million).

However, the Asian tourists registered the highest growth, of 11.1 percent compared with 2015, up to 354,500.

The number of Romanian tourists increased by 10.3 percent in 2016 up to 8.45 million and represents 77.4 percent of the total number of tourists.

However, Romania is still less attractive for foreign tourists than Bulgaria, which attracted around 8 million tourists in 2016, more than the country’s population, according to the data of the Bulgarian minister of Tourism.