site.btaIn Q3 of 2023, Bulgarian Residents Made More Tourist Trips Than Four Years Ago

In the third quarter of 2023, the Bulgarian residents who made tourist trips outnumbered those in the same period of 2019, which was a good year for tourism, according to preliminary data of the National Statistical Institute (NSI) released on Wednesday. In the third quarter of 2023, 1,822,300 Bulgarian residents made tourist trips, compared with 1,733,900 in July-September 2019.

The majority of them, 72.5%, travelled only in Bulgaria, 20.7% only abroad, and 6.8% both in the country and abroad. Compared with the same quarter of 2022, the total number of people aged 15 or over who travelled increased by 4.2%.

At 721,100, most Bulgarian citizens who travelled were in the 25-44 age group (39.6% of all travellers). The share of domestic trips predominated in all age groups, the highest (79.3%) being among persons aged 65 or over. The share of Bulgarian residents in the 15-24 age group who travelled abroad (25.0% of all travellers in this age group) was the largest compared to the other age groups in the third quarter of 2023, the NSI said.

The purpose of the majority of tourist trips in the country (70.0%) and abroad (76.7%) was holiday and recreation. Independent trips numbered 2,115,900, 84.6% of all private tourist trips. Independent trips without booking accounted for 89.2% of domestic trips and 68.8% of trips abroad.

In the third quarter of 2023, the share of expenditure on food was the highest on both domestic and outbound trips at 39.2% and 33.5% respectively. By comparison, in the same period of 2019, food accounted for 44.5% of spending on domestic trips, while transport accounted for the largest share, 30.1%, of expenditure on trips abroad.