Tourist arrivals on the rise in Slovenia

As summer nears, tourist accommodation facilities in Slovenia are registering an increasingly large number of guests. With 236,537 registered tourist arrivals and 653,091 overnight stays in May 2008, there was a 20% rise in tourist arrivals and a 14% increase in overnight stays compared with May 2007. Slightly over one-half of all tourist overnight stays (55%) registered by the end of May 2008 were made by visitors from abroad. Most (66%) were tourists from the following six countries: Italy (21%), Austria (15%), Croatia (11%), Germany (10%), the United Kingdom (6%) and Hungary (3%).

That Slovenians are becoming a nation of travelers was confirmed by data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia which show that in the first quarter of 2008 24.2% of the Slovenian population aged 15 and above made around 780,000 tourist trips, either private or business. Despite the fact that the percentage of Slovenian tourists on tourist trips dipped by 1.6 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2007, the overall number of tourist trips rose by 10.6%.

Private trips, around 628,000 in total, were made by 21.0% of the Slovenian population aged 15 and above. Of these, 58.2% took place in Slovenia and 41.8% abroad. A total of 73.5% of the private trips were of a shorter duration (65.9% in Slovenia) and 26.5% of a longer duration (63.4% abroad). Travel agencies organized 9.7% of all private trips, which is 6.4 percentage points less than in the first quarter of 2007.

The vast majority of private (95.7%) and business (97.2%) trips abroad were to other countries in Europe. Croatia was the destination of 25.8% of private trips in Europe, followed by Austria (23.1%), Italy (19.4%), Bosnia and Herzegovina (7.7%) and France (4.8%).

Slovenian tourists on private trips in Slovenia most frequently visited places in the municipalities of Kranjska Gora, Maribor, Zreče and Piran.