Romania becomes the main source of foreign tourists in Bulgaria

Romania has become last year the main source of foreign tourists for Bulgaria, with 1.38 million tourists, up 21 percent against 2017, according to Bulgarian Ministry of Tourism, quoted by novinite.com.

Foreign tourist visits in Bulgaria reached 9.27 million last year, up 4.4 percent compared with 2017.

“For the first time the foreign tourist visits to Bulgaria have exceeded 9 million, beating the record levels of the last two years,” said the Bulgarian minister of Tourism Nikolina Angelkova.

Most foreign tourists came in 2018 from Romania, Bulgaria’s northern neighbour.

In 2017, Greece was the main source of foreign tourists in Bulgaria but was overtaken by Romania last year.

Greece and Germany ranked second and third in 2018, with over 1.116 million and 850 thousand, respectively, according to official data.

Foreign visits in Bulgaria from Turkey were over 625,000, from Macedonia – nearly 560,000, and from Russia – over 511,000.

In Romania, he number of foreign tourists rose by 1.6 percent in the first 11 months of last year compared with the same period of 2017, to 2.6 million.