Romanian senior tourists favor domestic holidays over outbound trips

Romanian senior tourists favored domestic holidays (89 percent) over outbound trips in 2014, registering 9,273.9 of tourism nights in 1,000 out of tourists aged 65+, according to Eurostat.

The highest shares in EU of senior tourists who favored domestic holidays over outbound trips being recorded for residents of Spain (94 percent) and Greece (92 percent),followed by those of the Czech Republic, Italy and Portugal (both 88 percent). In contrast, a large majority of older tourists living in Luxembourg (99 percent), Belgium (91 percent) and Malta (82 percent) went abroad in 2014.

The tourists aged 65 or over living in the European Union accounted for 20 percent of the tourism activity (in terms of number of nights spent by EU residents). However, their share in tourism expenditure was a bit lower, of 16 percent. A senior tourist in the EU spent on average EUR 52.6 per day, or EUR 12.7 less than the average tourist.

The proportion of people aged 65 or over in all tourism nights was particularly high for residents of France and Cyprus, where they accounted for a quarter (25 percent) of all tourism nights in 2014, as well as for the Czech Republic, Greece and Sweden (all 24 percent), Ireland and Portugal (both 23 percent).

Across the EU Member States in 2014, the more senior tourists who spent the most on average per day were those of Luxembourg(EUR 120.8) and Austria (EUR 106.9), ahead of Malta( EUR 93.7), Belgium (EUR 89.5), Ireland (EUR 88) and Denmark (EUR 85.1). At the opposite end of the scale, the lowest average expenditure per person and per day were recorded for older tourists living in the Czech Republic(EUR 13.7), Romania(EUR 13.8) and Greece (EUR 18).