Foreigners were the majority of tourists in August, but stayed around two nights on average - domestic guests almost six

The State Statistical Office has numbers that look good at first glance. In August, 244,513 tourists were registered in Macedonia, accounting for 934,042 overnight stays. In the first eight months of this year there were 3 percent more tourists than in the same period last year, and 3.7 percent more overnight stays. For August alone, compared with August last year, tourist numbers were up 8.1 percent and overnight stays up 10.4 percent.

Foreigners were the majority: 53.6 percent of August's guests. Most came from Turkey - 45,747 - followed by Serbia (13,166), Romania (7,457) and Germany (7,324). That means more than a third of foreign guests in August came from Turkey.

But who actually stays? Look at the overnight stays and the picture flips. Of all 934,042 overnight stays, a full 70.8 percent belong to domestic tourists and only 29.2 percent to foreign ones. Working it out from the statistics office's percentages, a foreigner in August stayed on average just over two nights, while a domestic tourist stayed almost six.

In other words, for foreigners Macedonia is still mostly a short stopover. Foreigners' overnight stays in the first eight months are growing faster (5.7 percent) than their numbers (3.2 percent), which is a small but real step. For domestic tourists, growth is 2.8 percent in numbers and 2.2 percent in overnight stays.

This is the figure that gets easily lost behind the headline about more visitors. Visitor numbers are easy to boast about. How many nights they sleep, how much they spend and whether they come back - that is what fills the budgets of the hotels, the restaurant in Ohrid and the family apartment in Struga. Is anyone measuring how much those two nights leave behind?