Road Arrivals to Greece Pick Up Pace in August

Photo source: Hellenic Police

The number of road arrivals to Greece gained momentum in August exceeding the 1 million mark but still down by 57.7 percent over pre-pandemic 2019, when there were 2.4 million arrivals, a SETE Intelligence (INSETE) study found.

More specifically, according to the research department of the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), international road arrivals reached 2.8 million compared to 8.6 million in January-August 2019.

According to INSETE analysts, April marked the largest decline down by 88.2 percent compared to the same month in 2019.

Northern Greece, which works mostly with travelers arriving by road, has been greatly impacted. Stakeholders attribute the decline in visitor figures to deteriorating epidemiological data in the region and to testing requirements at the borders, which created reluctance for travel.

Promahonas checkpoint. Photo Source: EODY

Based on INSETE data, road arrivals showed the first signs of improvement in May but were still down by 79.2 percent at 141,764.

June also saw a 69.4 percent drop to 408,653 arrivals with a slight improvement in July to 922,058 visitors down by 56.2 percent.

The largest decline in road arrivals during the January-August 2021 period was recorded at the border point of Promachonas, down by 57.4 percent to 994,873 arrivals,  followed by Nymphaea check point, down by 88 percent to 153,486 arrivals.

In terms of source markets, road arrivals from Bulgaria were down by 2.8 million visitors (67.7 percent), from Turkey by 639,000 (83.7 percent), and from Albania by 952,000 (74.4 percent).

Hellenic Hoteliers Federation (POX) President Grigoris Tasios has called on Tourism Minister Vasilis Kikilias to take actions that would attract more road tourists beyond the traditional Balkan source markets and proposed launching relevant tourism products such as motorhome tourism, which attracted more than 10 million visitors in 2019.