Ljubljana, 31 January (STA) - Slovenian tourism growth appears to have continued apace in 2018 after several consecutive record-breaking years, with preliminary figures showing that 5.6 million tourists visited Slovenia in 2018 spending a total of 15.3 million nights in the country.

This follows from Statistics Office figures released on Thursday that significantly exceed those recorded in 2017 - 4.95 million visitors and 12.6 million nights - but are not comparable year-on-year because in early 2018, a new system for registering guests was phased in.

The new system was expected to result in a significant jump since it requires that all providers report data on an ongoing basis; in the old system, only providers with more than 10 beds were required to do that, all others reported just once a year and the reporting rules were looser.

In December alone Slovenia recorded 314,000 tourists and 842,000 nights, with domestic guests representing less than a third of the arrivals and nights.