The country welcomed up to one million foreign visitors per week during this month, according to statements from Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias.
In addition to tourists from France and Israel, Greece is also one of the favourite destinations for visitors from the USA and Austria. With travel arrivals over 900,000 per week for July and over 1 million for August, Greece can say its tourism sector is back on tracks.
“This year, tourism proved to be Greece’s ‘heavy industry,’ which [is not only capable of supporting] the national economy but also [offers] substantial support in very difficult conditions, like the ones that, unfortunately, have been set across Europe”, the Minister declared.
Despite losing the Russian and Ukrainian travel markets since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Greece has gained popularity across several other tourist markets for 2022.
“Greece will be the number one destination for travellers from France and Israel, very high in the list of travellers from the Balkans, and in the [top three for] travellers from Germany and from […] Scandinavian countries”, Minister Vassilis Kikilias continued.
Moreover, in order to attract more foreign tourists, the Greek tourism season will most likely be officially extended.
“There is evidence, not just indications, that the tourism season has already been extended and there are also indications that it will be further extended,” the Tourism Minister added.
At the same time, according to a recent report by ForwardKeys, six Greek tourist destinations were among the top ten in the European travel bookings top ten during the third quarter of this year, with some of the most popular of the Greek islands at high booking capacity during the ongoing summer season. For example, the islands of Andros, Naxos, Santorini, Ios, Sifnos, Samos, Chios, and Limnos are either fully booked or currently exceeded the number of reservations in 2019. Similarly, for the month of September official expect high tourist traffic. In addition, airports also surpassed the pre-pandemic passenger traffic volumes during this summer.
Tourism sector this year accounts for 20 per cent of the Greek GDP, hundreds of thousands of jobs in the sector, as well as $14.5 billion in revenues.
source: greekreporter.com
