Minister Kikilias Tells Sky News Greece’s Tourism to Recover Fully in 2022

Greece’s tourism sector is aiming to fully recover significant losses incurred by Covid-19 in 2022, said Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias in an interview to Sky News from London, where he is attending the World Travel Market (WTM) 2021 this week.

Kikilias said Greece took a “calculated risk” in 2020 by opening up to tourism  when most Mediterranean countries did not. By implementing targeted and well-researched measures, Greece managed to recover nearly half of 2019 pre-pandemic levels, he said.

The minister went on to stress the importance for Greece of the UK market and invited British travelers to visit lesser-known destinations.

The UK is a traditional key source market for Greece. Indicative of its importance, Greece finalized two very important agreements at WTM this year: the first with travel group Jet2 (Jet2.com & Jet2holidays), which is set to boost the number of airline seats to Greece by 600,000 in 2022.

The second, with budget carrier easyJet, which will add 500,000 air passenger seats to Greek destinations in 2022.

Kikilias also referred to the ministry and Greek government’s key priority which is to work towards more sustainable tourism growth through the implementation of a long-term action plan. In this direction, he said, the first steps had been taken to transform Astypalea and Halki into “green islands”

“Our goal is for Greece to become a model of sustainable tourism development on a global level,” said Kikilias.