BoG: Greece Travel Receipts Mark Significant Rise in February
Greece’s tourism sector is hoping for another good year ahead attributing the optimism to Bank of Greece (BoG) data which found that travel receipts increased by 80.9 percent in February compared to the previous year and by 76.4 percent in January-February 2023.
More specifically, based on central bank provisional data, travel receipts in February 2023 rose by 80.9 percent to 241.1 million euros up from 133.3 million euros in February 2022 and from 209 million euros in 2019. BoG analysts attribute the increase in travel receipts to an 80.6 percent rise in inbound arrivals and a 0.2 percent rise in average spending per trip.
According to BoG data, receipts by EU residents increased by 32.5 percent to 102.8 million euros and by 148.5 percent by non-residents to 137.9 million euros over 55.5 million euros in February 2022.
Looking at source markets, receipts from Germany dropped by 8.8 percent to 17.6 million euros. Receipts from France increased by 278.0 percent to 32.5 million euros, from the UK by 58.1 percent to 17.6 million euros, from the US by 159.0 percent to 20.3 million euros. Receipts from Russia were down by 80.3 percent to 0.6 million euros.
In February, arrivals rose by 80.6 percent year-on-year to 572.6 thousand and by 14 percent compared to 503 thousand in February 2019. Broken down, traveler flows through airports were up by 85.5 percent compared with February 2022 and by 79.0 percent through road border-crossing points.
Spending per person rose by 1.5 percent in February to 420 euros from 414 euros in the same month in pre-Covid 2019.
In the January-February period, travel receipts increased by 76.4 percent to 465.3 million euros over 263.7 million euros in 2022 and 441 million euros in the same two-month period in pre-pandemic 2019 (up by 3.5 percent), generated by an 83.5 percent increase in inbound traveler flows. However, average spending per trip in the two-month period dropped by 3.8 percent.
Receipts generated by EU residents grew by 28.1 percent to 197.9 million euros and by 145.0 percent to 266.8 million euros by non-residents.
Receipts generated by German travelers increased by 2.3 percent to 39.9 million euros, by the French up by 240.4 percent to 44.6 million euros by the Brits by 52.7 percent to 37.8 million euros and by American visitors by 86.9 percent to 28.4 million euros. Receipts from Russia for the two-month period were down by 76.8 percent to 1.0 million euros.
In the first two months of the year, the number of inbound travelers increased by 83.5 percent to 1,208.1 thousand compared to 658.4 thousand in the same period a year ago. Traveler flows through airports rose by 77.0 percent and by 107.9 percent through road border-crossing points.
Traveler flows were up this year by 3.8 percent over 1,163,5 thousand in 2019. Spending per person in the first two months of the year stood at 384 euros compared to 378 euros in 2019.
According to the central bank, the balance of travel services posted a surplus of 106.8 million euros in February 2023 and in January-February 2023 a surplus of 133.1 million euros.