Switzerland - an emerging city-break favorite

Switzerland – an emerging city-break favorite

While exotic destinations may be trending amongst Romanians this year, with the UAE and Turkey seeing considerable increases in interest as well as bookings, it might just be that quiet luxury is also a travel destination that is now more affordable, and closer to home. Switzerland is emerging as a favorite city-break destination for Romanians, as shown by data from Kiwi.com, a leading tech-travel company.

According to Kiwi.com, bookings* to Switzerland made by Romanians increased by 27.5% compared to last year, while the number of travelers increased even more, by 37%. The increased interest might be explained, in part, by decreasing prices – on average, tickets cost 12% less than last year, with an average of 112 euros for round-trips.

The most popular Swiss city is Basel, followed by Geneva and Zurich. Most Romanians are traveling to Switzerland from Bucharest, followed closely by Iași and Cluj-Napoca. However, Romanians are booking travels to the country in the Alps from other countries as well, such as Hungary, the UK, Moldova or France. Moreover, as per Kiwi.com data, Romanians are the 3rd nationality visiting Switzerland, globally.

Switzerland looks like the perfect destination for city-breaks: 77% of Romanians are spending up to 3 days there, while 13% will return in 4 to 6 days, and 8% chose stays of 7 to 10 days. On average, they’re spending 4 days there.

When it comes to booking habits, 1 in 5 Romanians book last-minute tickets, up to 3 days before departure, while a quarter of them plan ahead, booking 21 to 60 days before their departure date, and another 20% buy their tickets 7 to 13 days in advance.

So far, for this year, most Romanians booked trips to Switzerland in March. For 2023, bookings show that the most popular months were December, July, November and September.