UK, German Travelers Drive September Tourism to Greece

Photo: GTP

UK and German travelers gave Greece the thumbs up in September despite Covid-19 and international travel restriction confusion, according to the latest data released by Greek regional airports manager Fraport Greece.

More specifically, 213,875 holidaymakers from the UK and 190,293 from Germany visited Greek destinations in September. Completing the top five source markets for the month were Poland, France and Austria.

The country’s 14 regional airports welcomed in total 1.7 million passengers in September compared to 4.5 million in the same month in 2019, marking a 61.3 percent decline: with international arrivals down by 61.7 percent against the same month in 2019, and domestic arrivals at 300,211 against 735,637 – a 59.2 percent decline.

For September, the airport of Kavala recorded the largest decline in passenger numbers down by 73.1 percent, followed by the airport of Zakynthos (70.7 percent), and Samos (70.3 percent).

The number of flights also fell by 48.2 percent in September to 17,522 against 33,830 in the same month a year ago.

Overall, for the January-September period, passenger traffic through the country’s 14 regional airports fell by 72.3 percent to 7.3 million people against 26.2 million in the same period in 2019.

Hit hardest were international arrivals, down by 75.8 percent to 5 million passengers. Domestic traffic marked a 59.1 percent decline to 2.24 million passengers in the same nine months.

The largest drop was recorded on the island of Skiathos with 84,469 visitors in the nine-month period compared to 436,110 last year.

Thessaloniki, meanwhile, welcomed the largest number of visitors with 2,006,028 passengers, still down however by 62.9 percent against the same period in 2019.

Thessaloniki International Airport “Makedonia”

Greece’s two most popular destinations, Mykonos and Santorini, also felt the Covid-19 effect, recording a 73.1 percent and 75 percent drop in arrivals, respectively.

The number of arrivals on the Dodecanese islands of Kos and Rhodes dropped by 74 percent, as did those on Corfu and Kefalonia, marking a 72 percent and 76 percent decline in arrivals, respectively.

In terms of flights over the nine months, 37,604 flights in total (domestic and international) touched down at Greece’s 14 regional airports compared to 99,539 in 2019, down by 60.5 percent.