Tourism earnings slipped 2% in the first half — while EU and UK visits jumped 23%

Tourism revenue for the first half of 2026 came to 1.9 billion dollars, about 2% below the same period a year earlier, with the second quarter alone at 1.1 billion, down 3.8%. Visit counts tell a split story. International tourist visits — the overnight category — were 2,272,964, essentially flat at 0.1% growth. Total international traveller visits, which include same-day crossings, were 3,050,173, down 3.3%, and the second-quarter figure of 1,749,668 was down 4.9%. In short: about the same number of people staying, noticeably fewer passing through.

European visitors are the standout. Visits from the EU and the UK reached 249,201, up 23.4%, and the money they left behind was a record 335.7 million dollars, up 21.2%. Chinese visits rose 16.7% to 54,554 and Central Asian visits 3.1% to 115,416. These are not the largest source markets by volume, but they are the ones moving upward, and the European segment in particular is spending more per head than the overall average decline would suggest.

The tourism administration attributed the drop to weaker flows from countries affected by regional conflict and the air-travel restrictions that came with it, while noting that diversification and marketing work in European and Asian markets partly offset the loss. That framing is worth taking at face value in one respect: the decline is concentrated in specific origin markets rather than spread evenly, which means a business exposed to one of those markets has had a far worse half-year than the national average of minus two per cent.

Two things. First, if your enquiries come predominantly from one region, the national figures are not your figures, and the half-year worth checking is your own booking record by source country. Second, the European segment is growing in both visits and spend, which usually rewards a different product: longer itineraries, English or German-language material, and listings on the channels European travellers actually book through. Building for that market is a slower sell than the volume markets, but it is the part of the mix that grew this year.