Between 2013 and 2016, six countries saw overnight stays from foreign visitors increase by more than 10% each year: with the exception of Iceland, these are exclusively Balkan countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Romania). The only country in the region that appears to be excluded from the boom is Bulgaria, although this situation exchange .
Moving from the national level to the internal dynamics of specific states, Eurostat data reveal, among other things, the particularly balanced nature of tourism growth in Romania. While in other countries in the region visits are concentrated in single areas, tourism growth in Romania reaches a wide variety of regions of the country, from Transylvania to Bucharest, all the way to the Black Sea coast. Furthermore, the growing number of visitors to Romania come from a wide variety of countries: Spain, Great Britain, Ukraine and Turkey, to name just a few. In Europe, only Portugal has experienced such sustained and widespread growth in inbound tourism on a global scale.
Compared to other Balkan countries, foreign tourism in Greece, Croatia and Montenegro has seen slower growth in recent years – understandable given their long-standing popularity – but some regions of these countries have nonetheless experienced massive growth. This is the case of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, the easternmost region of Greece. Among all regions in Europe, foreign tourism has seen the strongest growth here in recent years: since 2013, average nights spent have increased by 33 percent year-on-year. This growth is largely due to the ever-increasing influx of tourists from Bulgaria and Romania (750,000 more overnight stays in 2014 than in 2012), taking advantage above all of the proximity to the Aegean coast.
Variations in tourist flows (2013-2016) and number of nights spent annually
Sources: Eurostat; for 2016, monthly data was grouped together; For Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro and Serbia, the respective national data were used.
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