ULAN BATOR, Oct. 14 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia welcomed nearly 480,000 foreign tourists in the first nine months this year, up 10.7 percent year-on-year, official data showed Monday.
In the January-September period, 61.8 percent of the tourists to Mongolia were from the East Asia and Pacific region, 31.4 percent from Europe, 4.5 percent from the Americas and 2.3 percent from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa region, the country's National Statistics Office (NSO) said.
Chinese tourists accounted for 31.6 percent of the total number of foreign tourists in the period, according to the NSO.
Mongolia has been striving to develop its tourism sector in a bid to diversify its mining-dependent economy. The country has set a goal of hosting one million foreign tourists and earning one billion U.S. dollars from tourism by 2020.
Mongolia attracted a total of 529,370 foreign tourists in 2018, up 11.01 percent from the previous year, according to the country's Environment and Tourism Ministry.
