TUNIS, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- A total of 6.11 million tourists have visited Tunisia by Nov. 10 in 2017, up 24 percent from last year, Tunisian Minister of Tourism Salma Elloumi said Thursday.
"We hope for more tourist traffic in the last month of this year, as tourism revenues have reached 929 million euros (1.1 billion U.S. dollars)," Elloumi said in a parliamentary session.
The number of overnight stays has reached 11 million, against 9 million during the same period of 2016, she added.
According to the minister, the number of tourists who visited Tunisia from July 1 to Nov. 10 exceeded the record number in 2014, particularly thanks to the growth of 19.3 percent in European markets.
The Russian market in particular has influenced the performance of the Tunisian tourism sector with 513,000 tourist arrivals as of Nov. 10.
Similarly, the German, British and Scandinavian markets have grown 43.5 percent, 18.4 percent and 28 percent respectively.
Among Maghreb countries, Algeria is the largest market for Tunisia with a growth of 33 percent, followed by Libya with a growth of 17 percent.
Elloumi also pointed to a significant increase in the flow of Chinese tourists, saying 16,000 Chinese tourists have travelled to Tunisia as of Nov. 10, an increase of 190 percent.
