🏨 Essentials
The tourist tax and where to sleep
A tourist tax is charged per person per night and collected by the property, not included in the rate a booking site shows. Stay in the centre; the city is too small for anywhere else to make sense.
The tax
Accommodation in Craiova charges a tourist tax per person per night. It is collected by the property, usually on the final bill, and booking sites do not normally include it in the price they show.
We are not printing the figure. The city sets it by council decision and we have no dated source for the current one — ask when you book. It is small; the point is not to be surprised by it.
Where to stay
The centre, within fifteen minutes' walk of Piața Mihai Viteazul. The museums, the restaurants, the bars and the Christmas market are all inside that radius, and the city is too small for staying further out to be a sensible trade: you save a modest amount per night and pay it back in taxis.
The exception is if you are driving and the hotel has parking, because parking near the centre is the one genuine friction here.
When the price moves
Rates are at their lowest in February and August. They rise sharply on 13 November, the day the Christmas market opens — about a fortnight before Sibiu, Bucharest and Brașov — and stay high to early January, with the 1 December holiday weekend and the last weekends before Christmas as the peaks.
Book before 13 November if you are coming for the market. The fortnight after it opens is the best value of the entire year: the market is fully running and the rest of the country has not started.
The full picture is on where to stay.
