Greece Among Virtuoso Luxury Travelers Top 10 Choices, Ranked 5th for Boosted Bookings

Mykonos Town, Little Venice. Photo © Maria Theofanopoulou

Greece has been included in luxury travel network Virtuoso’s Top 10 list as one of the world’s leading destinations for summer holidays and among the 10 leading countries recording increased bookings.

Rhodes, Anthony Quinn Bay.

According to data presented at the annual Virtuoso Symposium in Hong Kong this week, travel to Greece is picking up with 58 percent of bookings made in June through August, and holidaymakers preferring Santorini, Mykonos, Crete and Rhodes.

Based on future bookings from Virtuoso member agencies, the Top 10 countries for summer travel are (in order): the United Kingdom, Italy, France, Canada, Spain, Germany, Netherlands, South Africa, Ireland and Greece.

The Virtuoso report also found that Greece is also among the Top 10 countries reporting the largest percentage of growth in year-over-year bookings for the second quarter. Greece is ranked fifth, recording a 41 percent growth rate, after Australia (up 137 percent), China (up 101 percent), Ecuador (up 84 percent) and Iceland (up 49 percent), and followed by Japan (up 35 percent), Turkey (up 29 percent), the United Arab Emirates (up 22 percent), Canada (up 20 percent) and Croatia (up 18 percent).

The same findings reveal that though luxury travelers still prefer European destinations for their holidays, overall sales to the region are down by 4 percent compared to the same second quarter period in 2014, despite the higher value of the dollar to the euro.

Virtuoso is the travel industry’s leading luxury network, with 355 tour agencies and over 9,000 travel advisors in 26 countries. The network’s member agencies generate more than $14 billion annually in travel sales.