VILNIUS, Feb. 22 (Xinhua) -- Lithuania attracted a record-breaking 3.6 million tourists in 2018 who spent at least one night in the country, Lithuania's Ministry of Economy and Innovation said on Friday.
"Lithuania's tourism sector not only achieved record results last year, but also made huge progress as regards implementing a long-term strategy to diversify markets and maintain orientation towards the countries from where the tourists bring the highest benefits to the economy," minister of economy and innovation Virginijus Sinkevicius said in a statement.
Most visitors arrived from Germany, surpassing other countries of origin, which had earlier been leaders in Lithuania's tourism sector, such as Russia, Poland, Belarus or Latvia.
"Tourists from Germany, alongside the guests from Japan, China and Israel, fall in the group of travelers whose expenditures in Lithuania were the largest. The flow of tourists from these countries grew at the most rapid pace last year," Sinkevicius said.
Compared to 2017, tourist flow increased by 11.3 percent last year in Lithuania, Statistics Lithuania announced.
A total of 1.04 million tourists, or 11.7 percent more than in 2017, arrived from the EU countries, the statistics office said.
More than 214,000 tourists arrived in Lithuania from Germany. They represented 12.3 percent of all foreign tourists in 2018.
The ministry underlined that in 2018 incoming tourism from distant markets grew rapidly as well, with 27.3 percent more travelers arriving in Lithuania from Israel, 20.6 percent more from China and 22.3 percent more from Japan than a year earlier.
