Nine-Month Arrivals to Greece Fall Short of 2019 Levels
The number of international arrivals to Greece from January to September increased by 103.9 percent to 23,686.7 thousand year-on-year but still didn’t manage to surpass pre-pandemic 2019 levels, according to the latest data released by the Bank of Greece (BoG).
More specifically, traveler flows through Greece’s airports during the first nine months of the year rose by 98.6 percent and by 135.5 percent through road border crossing points, relative to the same period of 2021. The number of EU visitors was up by 79.0 percent year-on-year to 14,741.7 thousand and of non-EU travelers by 164.3 percent to 8,945.0 thousand.
Arrivals from UK, US record highest growth rates over 2021
Key source markets for the period under review were those of Germany, France, the UK and US.
The number of German tourists during January-September increased by 63.5 percent to 3,619.7 thousand as did the number of travelers from France up by 53.6 percent to 1,545.6 thousand, from the UK up by 227.9 percent to 3,852.6 thousand and from the US stronger by 182.6 percent to 835.9 thousand. Traveler flows from Russia dropped by 53.1 percent to 31.3 thousand.
Compared to pre-Covid 2019, incoming arrivals for the nine-month 2022 period were down by 12.1 percent.
September
In September, inbound traveler flows increased by 52.3 percent year-on-year to 4,560.3 thousand: up by 41.6 percent through the country’s airports compared to the same month in 2021 and by 118.4 percent through land border points.
BoG analysts attribute the increase to stronger arrivals from EU countries which were up by 38.3 percent and from non-EU states up by 81.7 percent.
The number of German travelers visiting Greece in September rose by 7.0 percent to 726.9 thousand. Travel flows from the UK increased by 87.0 percent to 844.9 thousand and from the US by 121.2 percent to 188.7 thousand. Russian tourists dropped by 65.1 percent to 4.4 thousand.
Inbound traveler flows in September were down by 10.8 percent over the same month in 2019.
Overall, for the nine-month period to September 2022, travel receipts increased by 78.3 percent to 15.6 billion euros compared to the same period of 2021, but down by 3.1 percent compared to 16.1 billion euros in 2019.
Unfortunately Crete got a lot of UK travellers who normally went to Spain as that Country cracked down on bad behaviour.