Tunis, Dec 30 (IANS): Over 6.1 million foreign tourists have visited Tunisia until December 20 this year, up 159 per cent from the same period last year, local media reported.

"A total of 6,116,756 foreign visitor arrivals were registered in Tunisia from the beginning of the year until December 20, compared to 2,354,755 tourists during the same period of 2021," Xinhua news agency quoted Lotfi Mani, a marketing director at the Tunisian National Tourist Office (ONTT), as saying to a local media outlet.

He added that the total number of tourists is likely to reach 6.3 million by the end of this year, with France, Germany, Poland, Czech and Algeria being the main origin countries of tourists.

Tourism is an important pillar of the Tunisian economy, representing 14 per cent of the gross domestic product and offering nearly 400,000 direct and indirect job opportunities.

The Tunisian tourism sector has experienced the worst crisis in the past decade, as it was hit by the political crisis caused by the Arab Spring uprising in 2011, and the terrorist attacks at the Bardo Museum in the capital Tunis and at a beach resort in Sousse in 2015.

Since 2020, the crisis had been aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic.