Ljubljana, 25 April (STA) - Tourist accommodation facilities recorded nearly 337,400 arrivals and just over 841,400 nights in March, up 21.6% and 17.6%, respectively, in a year. Tourists most often spent the night in the municipalities of Ljubljana, Piran and Bled, while the largest numbers of tourists visited municipalities with spas, Statistics Office data shows.
Domestic tourists accounted for around 109,000 arrivals in March, a drop of 2.6%, and for around 304,000 nights, a drop of 2.4% from March last year.
They most often spent the night in the coastal municipality of Piran, and two municipalities with spas, Podčetrtek and Brežice, east.
Tourists from abroad meanwhile accounted for more than 228,000 arrivals, up my as much as 38%, while spending 538,000 nights in Slovenia, up a third.
They most often slept in the municipality of Ljubljana, followed by Piran and the Alpine municipality of Bled.
Tourists from Italy accounted for 14% of all foreign nights (+40%), Austrians for a bit more while the total number of their nights increased by 38%, followed by German, Croatian, Hungarian and Czech tourists. The number of nights by Czech tourist saw the most significant rise, 77%.
Tourists generated the largest number of nights in spa municipalities (29%), with Moravske Toplice in the northeast leading the way.
Comings next were mountain and coastal municipalities, as well as Ljubljana as the capital of the country.
While the number of tourist nights increased in all tourist municipalities compared to March 2023, the biggest rise (36%) was recorded on the coast.
The average number of tourist nights was the longest in spa municipalities, at 3.2 nights, while it was the shortest in Ljubljana, at 2 nights.
Domestic and foreign tourists spent half of all the nights in March in hotels, followed by private rooms.
In the first quarter of the year, tourist accommodation facilities recorded 909,085 arrivals, up 8.6% from the same period last year.
The number of nights increased by 5.7% to 2.42 million, respectively.
The number of arrivals and nights by foreign tourists increased by 15% and 11%, respectively, while the numbers for domestic tourists were down by 0.9% and 1.6%.
