Greek Tourism Makes Bad Start

The Bank of Greece recently released data that shows a 20.2 percent reduction in tourism revenue for the first two months of 2009 over the same period last year.

January and February 2009 also saw a 20.6 percent drop in spending by Greeks that traveled abroad.

More specifically, the Bank of Greece reported that during the first two months of the year non-Greek residents spent 283.7 million euros as opposed to 355.7 million euros spent during the same period of 2008.

Similarly, travel expenditure abroad by Greek tourists fell to 364.8 million from 459.4 million for the two-month period last year.

Thus, the net revenue for travel services fell by 23 million euros, against 103.7 million.