Foreign visits to Bulgaria decreased by over 10 % in August 2009 compared to the same month last year.

The National Statistical Institute (NSI) reported Monday that most of those visitors were people traveling on vacation – 60% and 26% were transit trips.

The most tourists came from Germany – 175 000, Romania – 81 400, Poland – 78 600, and the Czech Republic – 67 000. From the transit travelers, the most came from Romania followed by Turkey, Germany and Austria.

From the EU countries, Bulgaria registered the lowest numbers for visitors from Malta (over 91%), Sweden (73%), Denmark (65%), Slovakia (60%), and Finland (over 51%).

There is an increase in the number of visitors from Spain (over 96%), the Czech Republic (61%), Norway (36%), Serbia (34%).

Visits from Israel (37%0 and Canada (12%) also went up.

Meanwhile, Bulgarians’ trips abroad in August are down by 7,7% year on year. The majority of them were business trips (47%) followed by vacations (29%) mainly to neighboring countries such as Greece, Serbia, Romania, Turkey.

The largest increase of Bulgarian trips abroad in August was to Macedonia (25%) Greece (7,5%), and Romania (0,4%).

Bulgarians, however, did not visit more distant countries as much, with large decreases in trips to Japan (over 61%), Finland (58%), Sweden (57%).