Business Forum • 27 May, 2024 at 4:50 PM
While summer may not look too close for Romanians looking at their weather apps, they're already looking for places to get away to for the upcoming season. Kiwi.com, a leading travel-tech company, looked at where Romanians are booking to travel* this summer, and shares emerging trends.
One thing is clear: while Romanians remain true to tried and tested summer destinations, they're mixing up their travel preferences this year, and trying out new places.
When it comes to countries, the top 3 so far are traditional summer destinations: Italy, Spain and Greece, the same as last year. However, with the national team playing at the Euro, Germany is up next, followed by the UK, France, Turkey, Portugal, Belgium and Hungary.
Some countries are seeing increased interest this year as: most notably, Albania, seeing a 220% increase in bookings, Turkey by 43%, the US by 29% and Hungary by 24%.
Some routes are getting special attention this year: bookings from Bucharest to Bari increased by 148%, to Frankfurt tripled, and to Istanbul increased by 48%.
Top 10 destination cities for summer of 2024 are London, Milan, Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Athens, Istanbul, Madrid, Brussels, and Budapest. Most Romanians will be flying out from Bucharest.
On average, Romanians paid €156 for their tickets, a 12% increase compared to last year. Flying from different parts of the country seems to come with unexpected perks, as the cheapest tickets for short haul flights were from Timisoara (€97), for medium-haul flights - Iași (€126), and for long-haul flights from Bucharest, at €504.
Over half (53%) chose city-breaks of up to 3 days, 18% chose stays of 4 to 6 days, while another 19% will spend between 7 and 10 days away.
Bookings counted were made unitl until 20.05.2024 by Romanian nationals on Kiwi.com to depart from anywhere, excluding Romania as destination, from 1 June - 31 August.
Kiwi.com is a leading global travel tech company headquartered in the Czech Republic. Kiwi.com's innovative algorithm enables users to find better route options and prices other search engines can't see, performing billions of price checks per day across 95% of global flight content.