The two figures for foreign tourists and nights they spent in Slovenia in the same period was up almost 1% and 2% year on year, respectively.

SURS, which today presented in more detail tourism statistics for March, said Italy was the most important market for Slovenia in both the first quarter and March.

In March, Italian tourists accounted for 16% of all tourist nights, followed by tourists from Austria (12%), Croatia (8%), Germany (7%) and Hungary (6%).

However, a drop in arrivals from all the key markets was recorded that month, with the steeped drop of 19% accounted for by tourists from Germany.

In the January-to-March period, however, Italian tourists spent more than 224,000 nights in Slovenia, a drop of almost 6% from the same period last year.

In March, the majority of tourists visited spas, which accounted for 30% of all nights, followed by the mountains (21%), the seaside (18%) and the capital of Ljubljana (15%).

A rise in tourist nights in March was recorded in all types of tourist municipalities bar the mountainous ones. The most robust growth (+7%) was recorded in Ljubljana.

Ljubljana also saw an almost 7% rise in tourist nights in the first three months of 2019, followed by mountainous municipalities (+4%) and spas (+3%).

2018 was a record year for Slovenian tourism, with arrivals up 8% to 5.9 million and nights 10% to 15.7 million, both on account of foreign tourist, whereas the number of Slovenian tourists remained at the 2017 level.

This was largely in line with world and European trends in tourism.

Slovenia's goal is to increase the number of foreign tourists and extend the number of days a tourist spends in the country. More visits outside the main season are also one of the goals.