Number Of Tourists In Bulgaria Drops

The number of EU tourists in Bulgaria has dropped by 15.5% since the beginning of the year, shows data of the Association of touroperators and tour agencies (ABTTA), quoted by Dnevnik.bg.

The overall drop in the tourist sector, according to the association, is 5.7%. It explains the differences between their data and the official data with the fact that the National Statistics Institute was also counting business trips and visits to friends as tourism.

According to ABTTA the tourists from the EU were only half of those who visited the country, compared to 70% five years ago. The chairperson of the association Bayko Baykov said that the decreasing number of tourists from countries such as Germany, the UK and the Nordic countries was a constant trend in the past few years.

“Those are the markets which traditionally provide sustainability of the tourist sector in Bulgaria,” Baykov said.

According to him, since the beginning of 2014, the number of German tourists decreased by 10.4%, of Romanian – by 17.8%, of British – 24.4%, of Danish – 36.8%, of Swedish – 36.9% and of Dutch – 20.9%.

The tensions between Russia and Ukraine affected the Ukrainian tourists whose number dropped by 10%, but that of Russian remained at the same level as last year.

At the same time, the number of tourists from Israel increased by 29% and of tourists from Turkey – by almost 30%.

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