Tourism covers the activities performed by persons during their travelling and stays outside their usual place of residence for a consecutive period of time which does not exceed one year, for such purposes as leisure, business, visiting friends and relatives, medical treatment, religion, pilgrimage.
Organized tourism – tourism form characterized by a beforehand service agreement, including the services related to tourist’s travel and stay, through contracts or any other types of arrangements.
Tourism forms:
- domestic tourism: movement of residents of the Republic of Moldova within the country for touristic purposes;
- inbound tourism: the reception by country of the foreign persons with a stay longer than 24 hours for a tourist purpose;
- outbound tourism: the movement of residents of a country outside its borders for tourism purpose with a stay longer than 24 hours.
The three basic forms of tourism mentioned above may be associated, obtaining thus the following categories of tourism:
- internal tourism - the movement of Moldovan residents within the country for tourism purposes;
- inational tourism which regroups domestic and outbound tourism;
- international tourism - the set of relationships and phenomena resulting from the movement and stay of persons visiting, for tourism purposes, a country other than the country of residence; includes the inbound and outbound tourism.
Travel agencies are individual or legal persons who sell or offer for sale the own or contracted tourist services from other suppliers as well as packages of tourist services set up by the tour operator.
Tour-operators are individual or legal persons who organize packages of tourist services and sell or offer them for sale directly or through a travel agency.
Tourists represent the individual persons traveling to any place other than their place of residence for a period of at least 24 hours and for a purpose other than the pursuit of a paid activity in the place visited.
Excursionists (one-day visitors) represent the persons who do not spend at least one night in a collective or private tourist accommodation structure.
Tourists/excursionists participating in organized tourism are the persons who benefit from the services which are offered and sold by the economic agents that organize the tourism activity.
The tourist accommodation structure represents any construction or well-established place meant, according to its design and operation, to accommodate tourists.
Collective tourist accommodation structure represents the structure which offers rooms and spaces for travelers, and the number of places offered by such a structure should be higher than a minimum specified for groups of persons bigger than a family; all the places of the accommodation structure should have a common commercial administration, even if it is a non-profit unit (for unprofitable aims).
The following are not considered to be tourist accommodation structures:
- accommodation units used exclusively by owners and lodgers for longer than one year, regardless of their classification;
- population auxiliary dwellings, used for tourist purpose exclusively by their owners;
- hostels, boarding schools during the school year;
- health care units (except for resorts and other similar spaces which practice touristic activities;
- sleeping wagons;
- barracks and dormitories for workers, hostels for elderly people, and orphanages.
The tourist accommodation structures do not include the “rooms for rent in family dwelling” unit, regardless of the number of existing bed-places in these units.
Existing (installed) tourist accommodation capacity represents the number of accommodation places of touristic usage registered within the last act of acceptance, homologation, classification of tourist accommodation structures, excluding the additional beds which may be installed in case of need. Number of places is determined for the operational tourist accommodation structures existing as of December 31.
Operational tourist accommodation capacity represents the number of accommodation places offered to tourists by the collective tourist accommodation structures, taking into account the number of days when the respective structures stay open during the considered period, meaning the days when it was possible to accommodate the tourists. It is expressed in places-days (number of places * number of days). The places from the temporarily closed rooms or structures due to lack of tourists, for repairing works, or for other reasons are excluded.
Number of bed-places is determined by the number of persons who can stay overnight in the beds installed in the tourist accommodation structures.
Tourist arrival in the tourist accommodation structure represents the situation when a person is registered in the tourist accommodation structure registry so as to be hosted for one or more consequent nights. Every tourist accommodation structure counts one arrival per tourist, regardless of the number of nights he/she stays consequently in the establishment. The tourists staying in the structure since the month prior to the reported month are not included in the number of arrivals. In case of families hosted in the tourist accommodation structure, the number of arrivals includes every member of the family for whom at least one accommodation place was paid.
Tourists accommodated in the tourist accommodation units cover all the persons (residents and non-residents) who travel outside the localities in which they have their permanent residence, for a period of time less than 12 months, and stay at least one night in a tourist accommodation unit in the visited locality from the country; the main purpose of the trip not being related to performance of a remunerated activity in the visited place.
Overnight is the interval of 24 hours starting with the hotel hour, during which the person is registered in the tourist accommodation space and benefits from hosting, based on the tariff set for the occupied space, even though the duration of the real stay is smaller than the mentioned interval. The overnights afferent to the additionally installed beds (paid by clients) are also taken into consideration.
Tourist overnight is considered to be every night spent by the tourist or during which the tourist is registered (his/her physical presence is not necessary) in a tourist accommodation structure.
Indices of net use of touristic accommodation capacity in function expresses the relation between the accommodation capacity in function and its real use by tourists, within a determined period of time. It results from dividing the total number of fulfilled overnights to the touristic accommodation capacity in function during the respective period of time.
Average stay duration is calculated by dividing the number of fulfilled overnights to the number of tourists’ arrivals.
Touristic package (vacation package, trip package) is a pre-established combination of at least two touristic services, sold or offered for sale as a single product, for a price in which the cost of every component is not identified separately, these services exceeding 24 hours.
Touristic stay represents the time interval during which the tourist consumes the package of touristic services at the same touristic destination.
Average length of stay – division between the number of tourist-days and the number of tourists participating in touristic actions organized by the tourist agencies and tour-operators.