Greece’s 10-month Travel Services Balance Up

Photo © Maria Theofanopoulou

Greece’s travel services balance recorded a surplus for the January-October 2015 period, up by 5 percent to 11,858 million euros compared to 11,294 million euros last year, according to provisional data released by the Bank of Greece on Tuesday.

The central bank attributes the figures to a 4.1 percent increase in travel receipts by more than 528 million euros and to a 2.2 percent drop in travel payments by 37 million euros. The rise in travel receipts is a result of increased arrivals up by 7.9 percent.

October saw travel receipts drop by 4.1 percent year-on-year, primarily due to to a 6.6 percent decrease in receipts from euro area residents, as receipts from residents of non-euro area EU-28 countries rose by 3.0 percent.

Indicatively, receipts from Germany dropped by 3.3 percent to 221 million euros, from France by 6.1 percent to 74 million euros and from the United Kingdom by 4.0 percent to 120 million euros.

In the meantime, the number of inbound visitors in January-October 2015 grew by 7.9 percent to 22,470 thousand compared to 20,828 thousand in the same period in 2014, with arrivals from within the EU-28 up by 15.4 percent year-on-year to 14,416 thousand.

Arrivals from Germany, France and the UK increased by 14.3 percent, 3.5 percent and 14.2 percent, respectively.

On the downside, arrivals from Russia dropped by a massive 59.9 percent.