About 4.55 million nights of accommodation were booked in Romania in 2019 through collaborative economy platforms such as Booking, Airbnb, Expedia Group, and Tripadvisor, show the first statistics ever published by the EU on short-term accommodation booked through these private platforms.
Of these, most, ie 2.329 million nights of accommodation, were booked by foreign tourists, while 2.222 million nights were booked by Romanian tourists.
The 4.5 million nights spent in Romania in 2019 represented 676 thousand stays, of which 371 thousand Romanian tourists and 305 thousand foreign tourists.
Bucharest ranked 39th in the top of the most popular cities to visit through these platforms, with 1.265 million reservations made.
The most visited cities in terms of accommodation nights booked through these platforms were Paris (15.1 million accommodation nights or more than 41,000 guests in an average night), Barcelona (11.3 million), Rome (10.4 million), Lisbon (10.5 million) and Madrid (8.3 million). Taken together, these five cities account for almost 10% (55.1 million) of all nights spent in the EU booked through the four platforms.
At the European level, more than 554 million nights of accommodation in the EU were booked through one of the four platforms, or, on average, 1.5 million guests on a random day.
One in five nights of accommodation was spent in Spain (112 million nights of accommodation), followed closely by France (109 million). Italy (83 million overnight stays), Germany (40 million) and Portugal (33 million) complete the top five. Other countries with over 10 million overnight stays in 2019 were Greece (29 million overnight stays), Croatia (26 million), Poland (22 million), Austria (17 million), the Czech Republic, and Hungary. both 10 million).
In the EU, two out of three nights of accommodation were spent by a tourist from another country (372 million nights of accommodation, or 67%). In 9 of the 31 EU countries analyzed, the share of nights booked by foreigners exceeded 90%. In four countries, Liechtenstein, Iceland, Malta, and Croatia, the international share was over 95%.
Looking at another indicator, the 554 million nights spent in the EU in 2019 accounted for 53 million stays. This means that 100 stays were booked every minute and almost 150,000 every day. The highest number of stays was recorded in France (11 million stays), Spain (8.5 million stays), and Italy (7.8 million stays).
On average, in the EU, throughout 2019, a reservation or a stay represented 10.4 nights of accommodation. The highest number of nights of accommodation per stay was observed in southern countries, such as Cyprus and Malta (16 nights accommodation per stay), Spain, Croatia, and Portugal (13 nights). At the other end of the spectrum, a stay at a destination in Lithuania, Estonia, Iceland, Luxembourg, Romania, and Liechtenstein was, on average, a maximum of 7 nights accommodation. Not surprisingly, in the summer months of July and August, when families usually go on their main holiday, a reservation involves an average of 13 to 14 nights of accommodation. In all EU countries, the number of nights spent in 2019 was higher than the previous year. On average, for the EU, there was a 14% increase between 2018 and 2019.