Greek Tourism Arrivals and Revenue Plummet Due to Covid-19

The coronavirus pandemic and ongoing travel restrictions are sending Greek tourism figures to nearly nil with the latest Bank of Greece data revealing a 93.8 percent drop in the number of inbound travelers in June to 256 thousand with revenue nosediving by 97.5 percent to 64 million euros in the same month.

According to the central bank’s provisional data announced on Friday, for the six-month January-June 2020 period, travel receipts came to 678 million euros, marking an 87.5 percent decline against 5.41 billion euros in the same six-month period in 2019.

Broken down, the poor performance is a result of a 90.4 percent decline in receipts from EU residents to 271 million euros and by an 83.4 percent drop in receipts from non-EU nationals to 405 million euros.

A closer look reveals a drop in tourism-related revenue by euro area residents down by 90.9 percent to 210 million euros with Germany down by 93.5 percent to 59 million euros and France by 95.4 percent to 16 million euros. In terms of non-EU markets, the UK receipts dropped by 93.1 percent to 51 million euros and US by 85.0 percent to 60 million euros.

With regard to traveler flows for the January-June 2020 period, the number of incoming arrivals dropped by 76.9 percent to 2,178 thousand against 9,407 thousand in the same period last year: down by 84.6 percent though airports and by 55.4 percent through road border points.

Overall, the balance of travel services in June 2020 recorded an estimated surplus of 28 million euros compared to a surplus of 2,363 million euros in June 2019.