Greece Sees Increase In Arrivals By Road This Year

Nearly one in four tourists from abroad chose to visit Greece for vacation this season by car

Tourists arriving to Greece by crossing the country’s northern and eastern borders by car boosted arrivals by 25 percent, the Greek press said recently.

According to reports, out of the some 17.5 million foreign tourists expected to visit the country this year, almost four million will cross or have already crossed border points at Kilkis, Ioannina, Evros, Serres, etc.

Last year, some 1.3 million tourists visited Greece from Skopje, most of them arriving by car. Also, there were 571,139 road arrivals from Serbia and Montenegro; 509,576 from Turkey; 451,511 from Bulgaria; and 442,802 from Albania. Even German tourists drove to Greece in 2012 (199,535 arrivals).

However, reports said this year’s increase in tourist traffic from border crossing points to Greece revealed the many problems that exist: endless queues that caused major inconvenience to tourists and inefficient service at customs due to lack of staff.

The Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises has said that a prerequisite to achieve the target of 20 million foreign tourist arrivals in Greece over the next few years is to develop infrastructure that would facilitate incoming tourism via road.