Despite the heat and fires
Greece is heading for a tourism record
8/21/2023 4:28 am
Whether it’s a lonely mountain village on Crete, high life on Mykonos, a sailing trip in the Ionian Sea or Athens with its Acropolis – millions of tourists are vacationing in Greece again this year. The forecasts for a new visitor record are good. But the industry is following extreme weather with concern.
The best tourist year for Greece is right before the Corona pandemic. In 2019, the Greeks received, entertained and accommodated around 33 million guests, who brought the country sales of more than 18 billion euros – a record.
Now the tension is rising: Will Greece break the numbers this year? Various surveys suggest it, such as the data from the European aviation safety authority Eurocontrol. According to this, the arrivals and departures in the second week of August, for example, were 9 percent higher than the same week in 2019.
It’s not worth comparing with the Corona years – you can see that with the Greek National Bank (NBG), which also uses 2019 as a benchmark. In their latest tourism analysis of the current year, the bankers report on an extraordinarily successful spring quarter, in which arrivals exceeded those in the relevant period in 2019 by 10 percent. In comparison, the income increased by 19 percent or a whopping 2.8 billion euros. This dynamic start and the fact that Greece tends to be more popular than competitors such as Spain and Turkey are the prerequisites for a new visitor record, the experts noted.
“Reorganization of the tourist map” is imminent
This is also confirmed by current Fraport figures – the Frankfurt airport operator is responsible for 14 Greek regional airports, including Thessaloniki, Chania on Crete, Zakynthos, Skiathos and Santorini. According to Fraport, the number of passengers at the airports concerned from January to July 2023 totaled almost 18 million guests, which was 10.5 percent higher than in the first seven months of the record year 2019.
Record year or not, climate change, the ever longer heat and drought waves and the resulting increase in forest and bush fires are also causing concern for the Greek tourism industry – not least since the massive fires in the south-east of the holiday island of Rhodes at the end of July. Within hours, 20,000 tourists had to be evacuated from their hotels because the flames were getting closer.
So far, Greek hospitality has been stronger than the risk of forest fires, but change is also imminent, write the tourism experts at the Greek National Bank. There will be a “reorganization of the tourist map”, the dependency on the main season will decrease, because some guests will avoid the hot months of July and August in the future and instead travel to the country sooner or later.
However, this has long been the concern of current and former tourism ministers, who have been campaigning for years to visit Greece if possible, especially outside of the main season. The hotels and guesthouses are then cheaper, popular places less crowded – and the people who work in the tourism sector can work more.
What they are obviously already doing: For the current year, the analysts at NBG are forecasting an increase in guests of five percent compared to the record year 2019 and sales of up to 21 billion euros after around 18 billion euros at the time.