Stays in Accommodation Facilities in Slovakia Grew by 11% in 1H19

Bratislava, August 20 (TASR) - Tourism in Slovakia was successful in the first half of 2019, with stays in accommodation facilities increasing by 11 percent year-on-year and the number of visitors reaching almost 2.9 million, TASR learnt on Tuesday from the latest data from the Statistics Office. The number of Slovaks spending their holidays in Slovakia or using the services of accommodation facilities on business trips increasing by 12.3 percent year-on-year to reach almost 1.8 million. Domestic visitors thus made up six out of ten guests. At the same time, 9 percent more foreign tourists used the services of hotels, guest houses and other accommodation facilities, and there were more than one million of them in 1H19. "The growth chart, that is, the year-on-year increase in the number of both domestic and foreign guests in the first half of the year was topped by Zilina, Banska Bystrica and Kosice regions, where the visit rates grew by more than 15 percent," said head of the Statistics Office's company statistics Libusa Kolesarova. According to the authority, the total number of overnight stays from January to the end of June 2019 exceeded 7.6 million nights, increasing at approximately the same rate (12 percent) y-o-y as the number of visitors. Thus, in the long term, the average length of stay remains unchanged. "In the first half of the year, foreigners spent an average of 2.5 nights in one place and Slovaks 2.8 nights," said Kolesarova. am/df