Moldova is pitching itself to foreign visitors as an authentic wine-country escape rather than a budget break, after tourist arrivals rose by a quarter in the first half of 2026.

International arrivals grew 25% y/y in 1H26, according to the UN Tourism World Tourism Barometer published in September, a rate matched in Europe only by Uzbekistan and far ahead of the 3% rise for Europe as a whole and 0.4% globally. Moldovan accommodation units put up 159,600 non-resident guests in the six months, out of 257,300 tourists in total, the National Bureau of Statistics said on August 19. Hotels and motels took 23.9% more guests than a year earlier. Ukrainians made up 39.5% of foreign guests and Romanians 20.8%.

"We are not the market for everyone," Elena Stepanov, executive director of the National Inbound and Domestic Tourism Association of Moldova (ANTRIM), told IntelliNews on the sidelines of Moldova Business Week in Chisinau in late September. The association represents tour operators, hotels, wineries and rural guesthouses, and runs the country's tourist information centres in the capital.

The numbers start from a low base, but they show tourism joining medical services as one of the services exports Moldova is counting on as it pushes for EU membership. The constraint is no longer getting people in. Chisinau airport, now named Eugen Doga International Airport, handled 4.1mn passengers in 2024 and more than 6mn in 2025, a record. Stepanov reckons about half of them are members of the Moldovan diaspora flying home for the summer and holidays. What holds the industry back now is a shortage of beds in the capital and of trained staff in the countryside.

Wine first

Wine is the main draw. Moldova has more than 200 wineries, and over the past decade ANTRIM has worked with them to add tastings, guest rooms and conference space to what were mainly export businesses, Stepanov said. Producers turned towards European buyers after Russia's repeated bans on Moldovan wine, and the same cellars now pitch for business events and incentive trips. Some have marked out hiking trails through their vineyards. "We don't have mountains," she said, so the outdoors offer is built around walking and cycling the wine country.

Two state wineries carry the brand abroad. Cricova stores its collection in 120 km of underground galleries cut from old limestone quarries and has its own underground cinema and restaurants. Milestii Mici holds the Guinness world record for the largest wine collection, at more than 1.5mn bottles, in galleries some 200 km long, of which about 55 km are in use. Visitors drive through both by electric train or bicycle, and the tours are sold to non-drinkers too.

The biggest date in the calendar is National Wine Day, whose 25th edition fills the central square of Chisinau on October 3-4 with 114 wineries. Organisers expect about 200,000 visitors and an economic impact of around MDL78mn (€3.9mn), TV8 reported on September 29. The weekend also includes an attempt on a new Guinness record for the world's largest "human vine". Stepanov said many foreign visitors now come for three to five days around the festival rather than just the weekend, to see more of the country.

Not enough beds

Most foreign visitors stay up to three nights, and most of them in Chisinau. More than 75% of all accommodated tourists in 1H26 stayed in the capital, Radio Moldova reported, citing the statistics bureau. The city's hotels are often full in the centre, and ANTRIM is steering guests to guesthouses in the countryside, many no more than 20 minutes' drive away. Tourist and agritourism guesthouses took in 10.9% more visitors in 1H26 than a year earlier.

Most of the new rooms are being built with private money, mainly from local investors, with Romanians the most active foreign backers. In Chisinau two hotels have signed up with French chain Accor (EPA: AC), Stepanov said, and Marriott-branded Moxy and Renaissance hotels are due by 2028. The government has put the centrally located Zarea hotel up for privatisation, with bids due on October 20.

Finding staff is harder. Stepanov said the sector is short of workers, as it is across Europe, and that training village communities to deliver the standard foreign guests expect is slow work.

"Moldova is not a cheap destination and we don't want to promote Moldova as a cheap destination," she said.

A day trip to Transnistria

Almost every first-time visitor also wants to see Transnistria, the Russian-backed breakaway region on the left bank of the Dniester. Stepanov said the appeal is curiosity about a country that does not officially exist and a slice of the Soviet past. ANTRIM advises visitors to go for a few hours with a licensed operator or guide. At the administrative line, visitors are issued a paper migration card, which they hand back on the way out.

Operators sell the trip together with sights close to the region, and ANTRIM has started to build a tourism cluster in the southeast that brings together businesses from both banks of the river, aiming to keep visitors in the area for three or four days. Transnistria's own economy shrank by almost 18% in 2025 after it lost free Russian gas.

Travel advisories are a harder problem. Some large European governments still warn their citizens about travel to Moldova because it borders Ukraine, Stepanov said, which makes it difficult for tour operators to sign new partners there. After Russia's full-scale invasion began in 2022, ANTRIM kept attending trade fairs and ran campaigns about the guesthouses and businesses that had taken in Ukrainian refugees. "If you disappear, you'll have some questions," she said.

Teeth, opera and festivals

ANTRIM research in 2024 found that 30% of foreign travellers came for medical treatment, mainly dentistry, IVF and cardiology, Stepanov said. Clinics target patients in Italy and Germany, where they can advertise doctors who speak the patients' language and lower prices than at home, even after paying for flights and hotels. Medical patients stay longer than other visitors, and operators sell them city and winery tours as well. Moldova earned $64.4mn from foreign patients in 2024, according to Invest Moldova.

Culture is the other big draw. The DescOpera festival brings opera to the village of Butuceni in the Orheiul Vechi reserve, about an hour from Chisinau, each June. Its 10th edition in 2026 ran over four evenings, with guests including the National Opera of Bucharest. In Orheiul Vechi, old village houses have been turned into guesthouses that serve food from their own farms and yards.

The national events calendar began with 40 festivals and grows each year, adding marathons, runs through the vineyards and youth concerts. Gagauzia, the autonomous region in the south that is home to a Turkic-speaking Orthodox Christian minority with its own language and cuisine, is sold as a cultural detour. Stepanov advises visitors to come between April and the end of November, when harvest tours let them crush grapes and print their own wine labels.

Swiss and Brazilian bets

Stepanov puts air links at 78 cities, which she called very good for a small country and a small airport. The airport listed 70 destinations in 33 countries served by 28 airlines for summer 2026, including new routes to Geneva and Basel. The national marketing strategy concentrates on six markets, and ANTRIM uses its own smaller budget to test new ones. Its biggest markets are Romania, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland and France.

Switzerland is the newest. ANTRIM went to its first Swiss travel fair in 2026, betting that high-spending Swiss travellers would value Moldova's slow food and wine. For long-haul markets such as Brazil it sells joint packages. Before 2022 the partner was Ukraine. Since 2025 it has been Armenia, with a 10-day trip split five days in each country, three hours apart by direct flight.

A small project financed by Swiss development group Helvetas has packaged Moldova with Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine, and Stepanov said those tours have sold well in Spain and the UK. At home, her tourist information centres expect heavy traffic over National Wine Day, when, she said, Chisinau is a different city from the rest of the year.