More than 2 million Macedonian citizens have travelled somewhere abroad this year. Most of the trips happened in July, with Greece the most favoured destination.
Most of the trips happened in July.
According to data from the border crossings, as of 31st July, 2.126.314 Macedonian citizens left the
country. Most of the trips happened in July (395.310), followed by June (340.320), January (307.957),
May (303.946), April (284.047), March (269.650) and February (224.984).
Greece was the most attractive destination for the Macedonians, with 516.631 of them travelling there, while the biggest number (536.774) went towards Serbia, but the fact that it is a border crossing used by those who also travel to the EU countries was taken into consideration. Kosovo was visited by 398.962, Bulgaria – 297.981 and Albania – 208.801 Macedonian citizens.
There were 704.563 passengers on the two airports in the country from January until July, 668.870 of
them at the Skopje Airport and 35.369 at the Ohrid Airport. Most of them (15.6%) were travelling to
Istanbul, followed by Wien (8.4%), Zurich (8.3%), London and Basel (5.8% each), Malmo (5.7%), Belgrade (5.2%), Dortmund (4.2%), Ljubljana (4.1%) and Zagreb (3.8%).
The increase of the number of passengers can be expressed in double digits. In 2012, there were more than 900.000 passengers – an increase by 8.7%, compared to 2011 – while in 2013 the number of passengers surpassed one million – an increase by 17.4%, similar to the increase in 2014 (17%).
The increase is the result of the visa liberalization, which started in 2009, and the introduction of new destinations from Skopje Airport, offered by the low-budget airlines. The double-digit increase came especially after the introduction of direct lines to several European. destinations by the low-budget airline company Wizz Air, which offers direct flights to 14 destinations.
