- Employees who receive holiday vouchers want them to cover a full five-night stay for a family of two adults and one child
- The average amount offered by private companies through holiday vouchers is 2,200 lei per year.
- Almost 161% of public sector employees who received vacation vouchers went on vacation for the first time
Bucharest, March 29, 2024 – Employees in Romania consider vacation vouchers an attractive extra-salary benefit and would like it to be found more frequently in the job offer, while, for many companies, although they know about this benefit, they either do not have the necessary resources to offer it, or it is still unclear to them how it can be implemented, shows data from a market study conducted by the Professional Association of Ticket Issuers (APET) and the Tourism Alliance (APT) (2023).
Another study conducted at the University of Craiova* identified three types of behavior of tourists traveling with vacation vouchers. Thus, almost 16% of the public sector employees who received vacation vouchers had not been on vacation before receiving the vouchers, 4 out of 10 respondents had been on vacation before, but after receiving the vouchers, the quality or frequency of their vacations increased, and 14% were only going abroad on vacation and after receiving the vouchers they chose to travel to Romania as well.
"Holiday vouchers are an extra-wage benefit that has proven over time to have a real impact for those who have received them. They are certainly an essential tool for rediscovering Romania as a preferred holiday destination. In addition, the amounts allocated through holiday vouchers are a relevant boost for the Romanian tourism sector, and a study conducted at the level of the Ministry of Finance** shows that tourism units that opted to accept holiday vouchers recorded higher revenues by 9% and employed an average of 4.9% more employees", explained Elena Pap, President of the Professional Association of Ticket Issuers (APET).
"The vacation voucher system has proven to be extremely useful for beneficiaries, not just for the tourism industry. Employees who receive these vouchers have easy access to at least one vacation per year, they can plan a vacation, which is why more and more private companies have started to adopt and grant this extra-salary benefit. Therefore, we believe that the draft law currently under debate in Parliament, according to which private sector employers are even more encouraged to grant vacation vouchers, is beneficial. This will have a double effect both by further boosting the tourism sector and by facilitating an annual vacation for Romanian employees, much easier to access," said Adrian Voican, representative of the Tourism Alliance.
More and more companies in Romania are offering vacation vouchers
The data collected by the study conducted by APET in partnership with APT shows that, in Romania, some companies choose not to offer vacation vouchers because they do not have the necessary resources, this being the biggest barrier for not granting this benefit. Although an advantageous benefit from a fiscal point of view, offering vouchers involves a significant cost that must be borne by the company from its own resources.
However, the trend among private companies is significantly increasing, year after year. According to the study, for companies that chose to offer vacation vouchers to employees, the most important benefit was the fiscal one. Fiscal advantages provide a lower cost and, equally, increase the chance that the employer can afford to offer this benefit.
Therefore, to make it easier to implement, companies want a clearer legislative framework that would give this benefit better chances compared to other alternative vacation benefits, such as direct settlement. Moreover, companies believe that removing the 10% tax can increase the attractiveness of the benefit, in the context of including and taxing with CASS 10%.
Employees from Romania want holiday vouchers
Holiday vouchers have reached an above-average level of attractiveness, employees who receive them are satisfied with this extra-salary benefit, while employees who do not receive them would also like to have this benefit included in their salary offer. For the most part, employees are informed when it comes to holiday vouchers, they know what they entail and to whom they are granted.
However, most of the time, the amounts that employees receive through vacation vouchers do not cover a complete stay. The amounts granted are, on average, 2,200 lei per year, therefore, employees want their vacation costs to be fully covered. On average, employees want the amounts offered through vacation vouchers to cover a 5-day stay for a family of three (two adults and one child), which includes accommodation and meals in a mid-range establishment.
Offering holiday vouchers has an effect on employee behavior, so that those who prefer destinations outside the country also add a holiday in Romania, which they pay for with vouchers. At the same time, employees who used to go on holiday in Romania anyway, now use vouchers to cover as much of the total cost of the holiday as possible. The biggest impact is on employees for whom receiving holiday vouchers means access to at least one holiday per year, but they also contribute to increasing the number of nights spent during a stay, a greater number of trips or increasing the quality of the accommodation units chosen.
Holiday vouchers have a strong positive impact at the macroeconomic level: for every 1 lei granted in holiday vouchers, 0.12 lei of revenue is generated for the state budget, with a direct effect of 0.0022 lei in HORECA turnover and 0.025 lei in the turnover of tour operators and travel agencies. Furthermore, holiday vouchers have boosted the increase in occupancy in popular resorts, the average value of a reservation being 2,500 lei, of which approximately 1,500 lei covered by vouchers.
The market research was conducted by Mercury Research and analyzed the motivation for granting vacation vouchers by private sector employers and used qualitative research methods, on a sample of 262 private sector companies and 253 employees. The results may also contribute to improving public policy on granting vacation vouchers.
*Alba, CD; Popescu, LS, Romanian Holiday Vouchers: A Chance to Travel for Low-Income Employees or an Instrument to Boost the Tourism Industry?, 2023
**Ortan, I; S. Panthea; M. Zamfir; The effects of holiday vouchers on domestic tourism: evidence from a voucher program in Romania, 2022
