Inbound Tourist Traffic to Greece Up By 191.4% in Jan-July

A total of 13,260.6 thousand travelers (13.2 million) made their way to Greece over the January-July 2022 period boosting inbound flows by 191.4 percent compared to 4,550.0 thousand (4.5 million) in the same seven months in 2021, said the Bank of Greece (BoG) on Wednesday.

According to data released by BoG, Greece’s airports saw incoming traffic increase by 204.3 percent in the period under review while the number of inbound travelers via road through border-crossing points was up by 171.5 percent.

Tourist traffic for the first seven months of 2022 was down by 12.1 percent over seven-month 2019 levels.

Arrivals, revenue

During January-July, the number of EU residents increased by 148.5 percent year-on-year to 8,064.6 thousand and the number of non-EU visitors rose by 298.1 percent to 5,196.0 thousand.

Key markets supporting Greek tourism in the seven-month period were Germany, up by 157.8 percent to 2,065.6 thousand, France up by 131.8 percent to 900.9 thousand, the UK up by 658.7 percent to 2,031.7 thousand, the US up by 279.8 percent to 513.9 thousand, while the number of travelers from Russia dropped by 34.7 percent to 20.0 thousand, the central bank said.

Travel receipts in the January-July period were up by 154.2 percent over the same months in 2021 but down by 2.9 percent over 2019.

In July, meanwhile, inbound tourist traffic increased by 87.3 percent compared with the same month a year ago to 5,277.3 thousand but was down by 7.0 percent over 2019.

The number of arrivals at airports increased by 79.9 percent over July 2021 and by 117.2 percent through road border-crossing points with higher flows from both EU countries (up by 58.7 percent) and from non-EU territories (up by 165.4 percent).

Bolstering tourism to Greece in July were travelers from Germany up by 39.9 percent to 643.1 thousand, from France by 42.0 percent to 370.5 thousand, from the UK up by 357.9 percent to 813.5 thousand, from the US stronger by 95.2 percent to 189.1 thousand while the number of tourists from Russia dropped by 85.1 percent to 4.0 thousand.

In July, travel receipts increased by 62.7 percent against July 2022 and by 0.5 percent over record year 2019.