The Federation of Romanian Tourism Employers (FPTR) announces that the tourism sector has managed to stabilize in 2025 despite a difficult economic context marked by fiscal pressure and inflation. According to FPTR’s analysis, this resilience is due to the efforts of private operators, who absorbed some of the additional costs and invested in quality in the absence of government support measures. The coastline has seen an increase in the number of tourists, while nationally the decline has been modest, while the number of foreign tourists has increased.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (NSI) for the first nine months of 2025, domestic tourism recorded a modest decline of 1.8% in arrivals and 0.9% in overnight stays. In contrast, the Romanian coast recorded a 4.3% increase in the total number of tourists between May and September 2025 compared to the previous year, which represents an increase of about 70,000 visitors. The increase was supported by both Romanian tourists (+4%) and a significant advance of foreign tourists (+15%). At national level, the number of foreign tourists increased by over 5%. In the first eight months of the year, the turnover of hotels and restaurants stagnated (+0.2%), while travel agencies suffered a decrease of about 15.8%.
Tourism operators faced multiple economic constraints in 2025: accelerated inflation, rising prices for utilities and raw materials, tax increases, including the increase of the reduced VAT rate by two percentage points as of August 1. On top of this came difficulties in accessing investment loans and an estimated 65-70% drop in the amount of money from holiday vouchers. In this context, the FPTR and its members have adopted a number of policy measures, including the recommendation to absorb the VAT increase from profits at the peak of the season, encouraging voluntary tax compliance to support the maintenance of the reduced VAT rate and investing in the modernization of services to improve value for money.
Based on these results, FPTR declared 2026 as the “Year of Quality in Tourism”. The program aims to strengthen confidence in Romanian destinations through a series of initiatives. These include recognizing establishments with a fair value for money, continuing the dialogue with the authorities for a predictable fiscal framework (maintaining the reduced VAT and reintroducing the specific tax) and promotional campaigns highlighting establishments offering superior services.