Romanian tourism crisis: 73% of operators report a decrease in revenue in 2025

Romanian tourism is going through a difficult time, according to data included in the White Paper on Tourism 2025 launched yesterday, in Constanţa, by the National Council of Small and Medium-sized Private Enterprises in Romania (IMM Romania), data that confirms the difficulties faced by the business environment.

73% of tourism entrepreneurs who participated in the study conducted by IMM Romania stated that in 2025 they are facing a decrease in revenue compared to last year, when 60% declared that their revenue increased compared to 2023, according to the cited document. 60% of those surveyed claim that public authorities do not support this economic sector sufficiently, or rather the support granted by them is insignificant.

Moreover, 82% of tourism operators believe that next year the occupancy rate of accommodation units will decrease, which is why "they no longer think about investments, profits or employment, but want to be able to maintain the business at its current size", according to Social Democratic Senator Florin Jianu, former executive president of CNIPMMR (IMM Romania), who stated: "The White Paper is based on a sample of 300 entrepreneurs who chose to answer our questions. From the perspective of the evolution of tourism revenues, we have had consistent increases since 2023, but in 2025 we have a decrease. The main factors for the growth in 2023 and 2024 were holiday vouchers and reduced VAT. Hence, we are launching an appeal to maintain holiday vouchers and also reduced VAT. Otherwise, the state would lose approximately 10 billion from what the difference in turnover means because an increased VAT implicitly means higher prices, it means lower consumption, higher costs, actually means that Romanian entrepreneurs in tourism are losing their competitiveness”.

Representatives of the central authorities confirmed the difficulties in tourism and the fact that public institutions are facing an acute lack of data. omplete. Bogdan Şteţco, Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism, stated: "The figures are not satisfactory for me or for those in the industry, and it is a reality that we cannot ignore, because if we ignore this reality of data, figures and analyses, we will certainly not have the capacity to make all the efforts and return to an area where the data and figures look much better. We, those in the ministry, have this data and we are trying to optimize everything we have. Unfortunately, there is a pretty tough fight at the ministry level in collecting data. Without this data to generate an analysis, we are easily discovered. We want to have directions for promoting Romania and a target audience. In order to be able to do solid promotion, we need to know what the public wants to see in Romania."

Representatives of tourism operators stated that entrepreneurs are directly feeling the effects of the tax changes and the reduction of holiday vouchers.

Corina Martin, secretary general of the Federation of Hospitality Industry Employers in Romania (FPIOR), stated: "These figures represent reality and this is the moment of truth. During the season I never make any criticisms, we do not tell the reality in its true dimension because we are promoting and I am a person of promotion and I have always chosen to come out positively during the season, but the season is over, the season is almost over and we can call things by their names. We had a hard summer on the Romanian seaside, a summer with an obvious and clear decrease, fully felt by all operators on the Romanian seaside. What the Romanian seaside collected this summer will now be transferred to the mountain resorts. That is, other destinations will also register decreases. The halving of the value of holiday vouchers is the main factor for this decrease. This means that fewer Romanians can afford to go on holiday in Romania. Of course, the VAT increase also had an impact. But the devastating blow to Romanian tourism will be when it is decided to increase the VAT to 21% for this sector of activity”.

However, George Măndilă, president of the Mamaia-Constanţa Destination Management Organization, declared himself optimistic: "I don't know why entrepreneurs have gloomy forecasts for 2026. INS confirmed that in 2023 and 2024 we had significant increases. For this year we hope for an increase of over 5% compared to 2024. The early sales forecast shows that the increase for 2025 was over 30%. We have more money collected from the local budget from the tourism tax from year to year”.

The event organized yesterday by CNIPMMR and the Constanţa County Council also emphasized the directions of sustainable development, as well as the need for promotion strategies adapted to international trends, with the aim of transforming Romania into a globally competitive destination.