Greece Preferred For 2012 Holidays, Professionals Not Hopeful

Greece ranked fourth as a preferred EU holiday destination for 2012 following Spain, Italy and France, according to the Eurobarometer survey on the attitudes of Europeans towards tourism announced last month.

According to the survey, last year Spain was the country that received the most visitors, followed by Italy, France, Germany, Austria and Greece.

Many of the respondents said they would choose Europe as a destination for 2012.

Although Greece is among preferred holiday destinations for 2012, a recent survey, conducted by the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) in collaboration with the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE), showed that Greek tourism professionals are not hopeful over 2012 trends.

The survey recorded a significant decline on business expectations in Greece’s tourism sector in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared to the previous quarter.

More specifically, the business expectation index stood at 71 points for hotel enterprises and 48 points for tourism enterprises, down 35 and 22 points, respectively, from the July-August 2011 period.

This development is directly linked to the termination of the high demand tourism season from incoming tourism (April-October) and the decline of domestic tourism and business travel due to the drawn out recession of the Greek economy, the reduction in available income and rise in unemployment.

In regards to the first forecasts for the progress of Greek tourism in 2012, Greek enterprises appeared quite pessimistic as they predicted a decline compared to 2011.