Study: Almost half of Romanians don’t plan to travel for the holidays

The holiday season is fast approaching, but not everyone is making plans for this period. Over 38 percent of Romanians don’t have any plans and will most likely spend their holidays with family and friends, according to a study by OLX. Most respondents said they were planning to allocate an individual budget of RON 501-1,000 for the holidays this year.

Where they choose to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve, what budget they plan to allocate for this year’s holidays, the kinds of properties they have reserved, and the expectations they have are the insights found in OLX’s study.

Asked where they plan to spend their Christmas holidays, most people interviewed (48.7 percent) said they would stay at home. On the other hand, 18.5 percent of respondents will travel to their hometowns and 11.8 percent will spend Christmas in the mountains. According to the study, only 9.8 percent have chosen holidays abroad and only 6.2 percent will travel to a large city in Romania.

When it comes to New Year’s Eve, most respondents have decided to spend it at home (30.8 percent), 20.9 percent in the mountains and 19.4 percent in their native places. 11.5 percent of respondents will go abroad and only 8.2 percent will spend it in one of the big cities in Romania.

While the Christmas holiday will be spent with the family in most cases, things are not significantly different for New Year’s Eve: 53.6 percent of respondents will spend the holiday with close relatives (33.4 percent) or their extended families (20.1 percent) and 34.9 percent with friends.

Read more about

Sphera Franchise Group estimates sales of RON 1.64 billion and a 20% higher profit in 2024

read more

In terms of the individual budgets they plan to allocate for the holidays this year, 19 percent of the interviewees said they intend to allocate between RON 501 and 1,000, 17.7 percent between RON 251 and 500 and 13.4 percent have a budget below RON 250.

There are also people who will invest between RON 1,001 and 2,000 (11.9 percent), between RON 2,001 and 3,000 RON (4.9 percent) or even over RON 3,000 (5 percent).

As for the type of properties they’ve booked, the majority of the respondents (38.7 percent) booked or plan to fully reserve a villa or cottage, 31.1 percent intend to reserve guest rooms, 17.7 percent – hotel rooms and 12.3 percent prefer cottages.

When it comes to the expectations they have about the properties they have booked for their holidays, the main concerns seem to be comfort, location and the view of the location, the receptive and kind staff, the quality food and the relaxation spaces available on site. Last but not least, Romanians expect fun activities and costs to be reasonable.

“Through our study we have confirmed the hypotheses – Romanians place family first, and they like to celebrate Christmas at home. They tend to travel more for New Year’s and rather internally than abroad. We see this as an opportunity because in OLX’s Accommodation-Tourism section they can discover almost 5,000 accommodation options spread all over the country at very affordable prices,” said Monica Dudău, Brand Manager Storia.ro & OLX Imobiliare.

The survey was conducted during November 2018 on OLX.ro and involved 3,307 male and female respondents, aged over 18, from different areas of Romania.