PODGORICA (Montenegro), October 18 (SeeNews) – Montenegro’s tourism revenue for the first nine months of the year surged 39.6% to 420 million euro ($600million), Tourism Minister Predrag Nenezic said on Thursday.
“This year’s tourism season was really successful,” Nenezic told a news conference. “It was the most successful in the last 20 years.”
The number of overnight stays through September grew 23% on the year, while tourist numbers rose 19%.
“This means that revenue grew nearly twice as fast compared to the rise in tourist numbers,” said Nenezic. The statistics was based on final figures for the first eight months of 2007 and preliminary figures for September.
These calculations are based on official data for the January-August period and preliminary data for September.
The Tourism Ministry has projected a rise in tourism revenue by 21% to some 645 million euro this year. It expects the sector to generate 20.7% of the Montenegro's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007. The ministry expects the tourism revenue of the tiny Adriatic country to reach 1.968 billion euro in 2017, generating 27.1% of GDP.
Tourists in Montenegro numbered 351,903 in August, up 11.97% from a year earlier, the country's Statistics Office reported last week. They spent 2,699,062 overnights in the country of 620,000 people in August, 24.67% higher than a year earlier, while overnight stays by foreign tourists in August soared 261.21% year-on-year to 2,448,310.
A total of 952,000 tourists stayed in Montenegro last year, including 382,000 foreign nationals. The number of overnights totalled around six million.
($ = 0.6997 euro)