2.5 Million Tourists Visited Greece in Q1 of 2023

In the first quarter of 2019, Greece welcomed 2.5 million tourists from abroad. Air arrivals are almost twice as high as they were in 2019 before the pandemic.

SchengenVisaInfo.com reported that despite the rise in road arrivals, they are still lagging behind.

According to the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (INSTE), the performance of Greek Tourism is significantly higher than last year when COVID-19 travel restrictions were in place due to the Omicron variation. This was based on data collected by the Civil Aviation Service, Athens International Airport and Fraport Greece, as well at Border Stations.

In the first quarter of 2019, 1.4 million international arrivals in Greece were recorded, surpassing figures from the same period of last year by a total 87.5% or 646,000 arrivals. The growth rate is 12.8% compared to the January-March 2019 figures.

Vassilis Klikilias, the Tourism Minister of Greece, had previously stated that the target for this year was to increase revenues by a total ten percent over the previous year.

Tourism contributes 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), which is EUR195.55billion, and employs nearly one million people. The Minister also told Parapolitika the last year had been a great rebound for the country, after 31 million passengers were registered in 2019, before the spread the Coronavirus and new variants.

The Hellenic Republic wants to attract 80,000 foreign workers to its tourism industry in order to help it grow.

Greece plans to use its agreements with Egypt, Bangladesh and Syria, as well as Pakistan.

"We are working to activate the agreement signed with Egypt in (agricultural production)," the country's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis mentioned.

The Greek PM has previously acknowledged that there is a notable shortage of labour in the country, taking into consideration the tourism industry.

In the future, the lack of workers is likely to become more of a problem as the Hellenic Republic expects to receive a large number visitors during summer peak season.

According to AirDNA's recent survey, Greece registered the third largest increase in bookings for Europe in September of this year. This translates to an increase of 96% in overnight stays compared to the same period in last year.

Source: schengenvisainfo.com