Romanian Holiday Vouchers: A Chance to Travel for Low-Income Employees or an Instrument to Boost the Tourism Industry?

Abstract

Holiday vouchers are a tool that have been used for 40 years to encourage employees’ access to vacation and have been highlighted during the recent pandemic, when governments used them to support the tourism industry. Using a naturalistic inquiry that combined focus groups with workers from travel agencies and semi-structured interviews with tourists, we analysed the influence of the Romanian holiday voucher scheme on the tourist behaviour of employees in order to establish the holiday vouchers’ usefulness as a tool in social tourism or for the development of the tourism industry. An overwhelming share of the interviewees considered the granting of holiday vouchers beneficial. First and foremost, holiday vouchers enabled some people with blue-collar jobs to have their first holiday in decades. Secondly, vouchers influenced tourist behaviour mainly in terms of destination choice, services purchased and holiday frequency and/or duration. Moreover, for the past couple of years when there were major events with impacts on the entire economy worldwide, holiday vouchers proved to be a lifesaver for the Romanian tourism industry.