Greece Welcomed Over 27 Million Tourists in 2017, Says BoG

Photo source: Incredible Crete

More than 27 million inbound tourists, not counting cruise passengers, visited Greece in 2017, the Bank of Greece said on Wednesday.

According to BoG preliminary figures, the number of inbound visitors to Greece last year rose by 9.7 percent to 27.194 million, compared to 24.799 million tourists in 2016. The number of visitors from France increased by 8.1 percent, from Germany by 18.1 percent and from the United Kingdom by 3.7 percent. Regarding non-EU28 countries, the number of visitors from Russia dropped by 1.1 percent and the number of visitors from the United States rose by 11.1 percent.

The BoG data showed that arrivals through Greek airports increased by 9.9 percent, while visitor flows through road border-crossing points also grew by 8.7 percent.

Photo source: Incredible Crete

The increase in inbound travel to Greece last year, resulted in travel receipts rising by 10.5 percent to 14.6 billion euros, compared with the previous year. Receipts from France rose by 17.3 percent, as did receipts from Germany by 31.5 percent. Receipts from the UK also increased by 11.6 percent. Turning to non-EU28 countries, receipts from Russia decreased by 3.6 percent, whereas receipts from the US rose by 4.4 percent.

BoG underlined that the rise in travel receipts was attributed mostly to the 9.7 percent increase in inbound traveler flows and to a lesser extent to a 1.4 percent rise in average expenditure per trip.