SOFIA, Jan. 28 (Xinhua) — Nearly 9.3 million foreign tourists visited Bulgaria last year, up 4.4 percent year on year, the country’s Ministry of Tourism said in a statement on Monday.
Most foreign tourists, nearly 1.4 million, came from neighboring Romania, followed by those from Greece (1.1 million) and Germany (850,000), the statement said.
Turkey, Macedonia and Russia took the fourth, fifth and sixth places with respectively 625,000, 560,000 and 511,000 tourist visits, it said.
Tourism Minister Nikolina Angelkova commented that the figures were an incentive and a starting point for an even more active policy to promote Bulgaria as an attractive destination, the statement said.
Tourism is one of the pillars of the country’s economy. According to a report of the World Travel and Tourism Council, the total contribution of the travel and tourism industry to Bulgaria’s gross domestic product was 11.5 percent in 2017.