Half of Romanians would be happier if they would mix work and travel, study says

The challenging two years of the pandemic created strong debates around the concept of working from home. Employees started realizing that they can have more free time if they cut the time spent on commuting while doing the same amount of work or, even more, they can travel and work at the same time (either sometimes or full-time digital nomading).
Therefore, flexibility started being a desirable benefit that employers can offer. While there are now companies that fully changed their policies to allow more flexibility, there are still situations where employees are required to go to the office.
Kiwi.com, a travel-tech company, shares data regarding how Romanians are mixing working with traveling. The data were collected within a study completed by STEM/MARK for Kiwi.com, on people aged 18-59 from Romania and other countries in the CEE region, who have been at least twice on holiday abroad in the past 6 years.

Where are Romanians working from? 

Being asked if their employer allows them to work from home, a group of 52.2% said that they still go to the office full-time, 22.6% responded that they work in a hybrid system, while only 8.4% work from home exclusively. Out of the people that don’t work remotely, 92.8% answered that they will not be switching anytime soon.
On the other hand, out of the responders that already embraced remoteness, 45.7% claimed that nothing changes in terms of work and travel, 38.6% book longer trips and split it between work and travel or work during the day and explore during the night, 29.5% declared that they enjoy more weekends due to time saved without commuting, and 8.8% work from a different country on a daily basis.

Mixing working and traveling 

The survey also asked responders, no matter what their current work place is, how they believe traveling and working would impact their well being. 49.6% of them claimed that exploring new places while traveling would make them happier at their job, while 31.7% said that traveling would add new perspectives and ideas to their job. Another 17.2% responded that in general, people should either work or travel and 1.5% argued that they wouldn’t stop working if they had their laptop with them.

Requirements for working remote

In terms of what Romanians would require if they would work and travel, 53.2% are interested in high-speed internet, 43% think of safety in the area or country they would be staying and 31.5% want comfort and facilities. Another 27.7% would love an easy visa, stay and medical insurance, 27.5% wish to be able to communicate with locals and authorities, while 21% just need a beautiful location.

Friendly cities for digital nomads

It seems that Romanians are starting to embrace mixing working and traveling while some of them even grasped a full-time job as a digital nomad – a person that is location-independent and just needs a laptop to perform their work.

Globally, being a digital nomad is a concept that more and more people, especially the young, are enjoying. There are now cities all over the world that started offering visas especially created for their needs. Some of the friendliest cities for digital nomads are: Toronto-Canada, Chiang Mai-Thailand, Willemstad-Curaçao, Madeira-Portugal or Panama City-Panama.

The data were collected between October 14th and October 24th 2022, within a study completed by STEM/MARK for Kiwi.com. The target group is formed by people aged 18 – 59, who have been at least twice on holiday abroad in the past 6 years, from Romania (n=1010), Czech Republic (n=1012), Slovakia (n=1008), Hungary (n=1014), Poland (n=1010). The used method is Computer Assisted Web Interview (CAWI).