Growth In Tourist Arrivals Continues In Greece

The growth rate of international tourist arrivals to Greece is showing the rising travel demand towards the destination, according to the latest figures released by the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE).

The figures revealed that visitor arrivals to the country’s main airports in September 2014, compared to the same month last year, increased by nine percent to 2,117,401.

For the first nine months of the year, the increase reached 14.3 percent compared to the same period in 2013.

According to these recent figures, it seems that the 2014 arrival forecast for Greece to reach 19.5 million tourists (21.5 million including cruise passengers) will be exceeded.

However, SETE expressed concern in an announcement and said that despite Greek tourism’s encouraging performance in the last two years, potential investors have been stalling as a result of the ongoing talk for elections, lower growth rates in the eurozone and geopolitical instability in the wider region. The association underlined that those factors could also affect bookings for next year.

At present, bookings (excluding Russia) and the planning of airline flights for 2015 to Greece seem to be moving positively.