British Holidaymakers Snap Up Tickets to Greece

Hours after England said it would be allowing quarantine-free travel to amber list countries for the vaccinated, British travelers snapped up weekly tickets for Greece, which saw sales exceed pre-pandemic levels, said travel analytics firm ForwardKeys.

More specifically, weekly ticket sales for Greece reached 211 percent of 2019 pre-pandemic levels, followed by tickets for the Bahamas (161 percent), Croatia (107 percent) and Spain (88 percent).

Greek tourism stakeholders are hoping the UK’s “Freedom Day” decision to lift all Covid-19 lockdown measures on Monday will finally stimulate tourism from the UK, which is one of the country’s main source markets.

In the meantime, tour operator TUI said it had made changes to its program restoring amber-list destinations like Greece to it services. Destinations now added include Corfu, Crete (Heraklion), Zakynthos, Rhodes and Kos; Kefalonia as of July 22; Skiathos as of July 23; Preveza and Parga as of July 25; and from July 27 Santorini and Chania, Crete.

Low-cost carrier Jet2.com and Jet2holidays also resumed flights on Monday to the Greek islands.

According to ForwardKeys, tickets for international trips out of the UK rose by 24 percent in the week to July 13 against the previous week with the highest week-on-week ticket sales increases for Germany – up by 113 percent, Croatia (69 percent), Sweden (68 percent), Portugal (65 percent) and Albania (64 percent).

“It’s reassuring to see the UK issued tickets increase for summer travel, the question remains – will those figures manage to surpass pre-pandemic levels in those destinations? Only Greece is a safe bet,” said Juan A Gómez García, Insights expert at ForwardKeys.