Bulgarians most often travel to Greece not only on vacation, but also on business trips. This can be seen in the data of the National Statistics Institute for travel in September. According to it, Greece is the destination – a leader in trips for the purpose of rest and excursion and for business purposes.
The trips of Bulgarian citizens abroad in September were 816.5 thousand, up by 26.8% YoY.
The largest number of trips by Bulgarian citizens were made to: Greece – 243.9 thousand, Turkey – 208.9 thousand, Serbia – 61 thousand, Romania – 57.4 thousand, Germany – 51 thousand, Italy – 23.1 thousand, Austria – 19.7 thousand, Republic of North Macedonia – 19.5 thousand, United Kingdom – 19 thousand and Spain – 12.3 thousand.
The most common purpose of the trips was not tourism, but visiting, studying, attending concerts and sports events – 42.5%, trips for the purpose of rest and excursion have a share of 41.7% and business trips – 15.8%.
In September, the number of visits by foreign citizens to Bulgaria was 1,206 thousand or 8.4% more compared to the same month of the previous year, but one third of them were transits.
Visits to the country for vacation and excursions are increasing – by 20.6%, in particular other purposes (visiting, training, competitions and concerts) – by 4.5%, while those with official purposes decreased by 17%.
The largest number of visits to Bulgaria came from citizens of Turkey – 206.5 thousand, who were usually not traditional tourists, but indicated another purpose of their trip. They were followed by Romanians – 176.5 thousand, Ukrainians – 125.4 thousand, Germans – 102.2 thousand, Greeks – 82.4 thousand and Poles – 65 thousand. (Novinite/Business World Magazine)
