Slovenia's tourist destinations attracted 2.47 million visitors in the first half of the year in what is a a 6%-growth year-on-year. Local visitor numbers fell sharply, which was offset with a 40% jump in foreign arrivals.

Data released by the national Statistics Office put the number of local arrivals in the January-June period at 714,180, a third fewer than in the same period a year ago.

Local tourists spent 2.03 million nights at accommodation facilities, a decline of 28% compared with the first half of 2022 when they could still use tourism vouchers, introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic to help the industry.

Locals accounted for less than a third of all nights recorded by accommodation providers in the country. The number of those rose by almost 4% year-on-year to 6.26 million in the first half of the year.

Foreign visitor arrivals were up by almost 40% to 1.76 million, and these tourists spent 4.22 million nights in Slovenia, 32% more year-on-year.

German tourists accounted for almost 651,000 or 15% of all overnight stays spent by foreign visitors. Number-wise, they were followed by tourists from Italy, Austria, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.

Notably, the number of Italian tourists in Slovenia was up by almost two-thirds year-on-year.

In June alone, tourism facilities recorded more than 685,000 arrivals, down almost 14% on the same month a year ago and the number of nights spent fell by 13.4% to 1.71 million. However, this is still 3% more compared with the pre-Covid year of 2019.