Romania's tourism sector had a direct contribution of EUR 5.21 billion to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2018, slightly higher than in 2017, placing Romania on the 32nd place in the world, ahead of Slovakia and Bulgaria, but behind Greece and the Czech Republic. The total tourism sector's total contribution to Romania's economy, which also takes into account the investments and spending determined by this sector, was some EUR 15.3 billion in 2018, up by 8.4% compared to 2017. In the first three months of the year 2018, there were 3.12 millions of foreign tourists. Compared to the same 3 months of the previous year, arrivals increased by 10.9% and overnight stays in accommodation establishments increased by 7.1%. In the first nine months of the year 2019, there were 10 millions of foreign tourists. Compared to the same 9 months of the previous year, arrivals increased by 10.2%. According to National Tourism Statistics, 15.7 million domestic and foreign tourists stayed in overnight accommodations in 2018. Of these 2.2 million are recorded as foreign tourists. The most visited cities are Bucharest, Constanța, Brașov, Timișoara, Sibiu, Alba-Iulia, Cluj-Napoca, Sighișoara, Iași and Oradea. Natural touristic attractions include the Danube, the Carpathian Mountains, and the Black Sea. The most popular destinations for tourists are the capital city Bucharest, Brașov County, Cluj County, Prahova County, Constanța County, Bihor County and Sibiu County.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Romania

Activities

Major tourist attractions

Festivals

Foreign visitors by country

Most visitors arriving to Romania in 2022 were from the following countries:

Facilities for disabled travellers

Facilities for disabled travellers in Romania range from patchy to nonexistent. Anyone with mobility problems should go prepared and ideally have local contacts. Although it has made some slow strides towards disabled access since then, and new buildings need to be wheelchair-accessible, implementation has been very poor. In practice Romania remains by and large off-limits to disabled travellers.

Industrial and creative tourism

Industrial tourism, as a niche of tourism in Romania and as a solution to the restructuring and disappearance of former large industrial sites (mining, metallurgy, heavy industry), takes on interest in the country still slowly, despite the country's join to the European Union in 2007. Even if presently the country is confronted with a long and difficult economic transition, it has a rich industrial and scientific history with many of the world's priorities and still has surviving authentic traditional crafts and rural communities. Limited to some geographic areas and not yet on a large scale, by the means of European funds and projects, a sustainable revival of the traditional sector is supported, which also implies creative tourism participatory activities. Against this big potential, there are relatively few entities, the majority being state owned, that are organizing, providing or permitting public visits, a main cause of this still being the weak implication and support of many public authorities. Meanwhile, the tourism stakeholders pay a relatively weak attention to the hard core of this niche (industrial heritage, technique, science and living industry), and practically there are not many package offers of this kind on the market, with some notable exceptions: ethnographic and wine tourism, also some rehabilitated industrial and forest narrow railways and steam engines still operating.

Primary attractions

According, an industrial and creative tourism attractions web directory for Romania and some neighbouring countries, providing photos and short English descriptions of each objective, the main attractions open to the public are:

Infrastructure

There are 16 international commercial airports in service today. Overall, airports in the country were transited in 2016 by 16.4 million passengers. The largest number of passengers was attracted by Bucharest's Henri Coandă International Airport, which closed the year with a traffic of almost 11 million passengers. Romania also has a large network of railways, CIA World Factbook lists Romania with the 22nd largest railway network in the world. The railway network is significantly interconnected with other European railway networks.