Tourism trumps pre-Covid figures in July

Fresh data from the Statistics Office shows visitors spending 2.7 million nights at the country's tourist accommodation facilities in July, an increase of 17% on the same month a year ago and 5% above the July 2019 figure.

Visitor arrivals were up by nearly a fourth to 952,000 from July last year. Of these, 767,000 were foreign visitors, which marks an increase of 88% year-on-year.

Foreign visitors spent almost two million nights in Slovenia or 90% more than in July 2021 to match the pre-pandemic figures.

There were fewer Slovenian visitors though with their arrivals halving to 185,000 and nights spent falling by 46% to 670,000.

Visitors from Germany accounted for 17% of the nights spent by foreign tourists with their favourite destination being the Bovec municipality. Czech visitors and Dutch visitors accounted for 10% each.

Foreign visitors most often stayed the night in Ljubljana and domestic visitors preferred the coastal municipality of Piran. The latter attracted the largest number of visitors overall.

Mountain resorts was where more than one million nights were spent, the most in the lakeside resort of Bled. Almost one quarter of all overnight stays were recorded at seaside resorts, followed by spa resorts, Ljubljana, and other urban municipalities.

In Ljubljana, nights spent by foreign visitors in July accounted for almost 30% of all overnight stays so far this year. The capital recorded visitors spending 277,700 nights in July, which is twice as many as in July 2021 and almost as many and in July 2019.

Hotels where the most popular type of accommodation (29%) ahead of private accommodation such as rented rooms and apartments (26%) and camp sites (24%).

In the seven months to the end of July, Slovenia attracted 3.3 million visitors, both foreign and domestic, who spent 8.7 million nights, which is roughly 4.7 million more than in the same period last year. Foreigners accounted for 60% of the nights.