Hotels, Transport Almost Fully Booked for Easter in Greece

Easter on Corfu.

Greek hotels are seeing full occupancy levels ahead of Orthodox Easter next weekend with tourism professionals expecting activity to exceed pre-Covid 2019 levels.

Greeks are eager to get away for the extended Easter holiday this weekend with tickets for intercity buses, trains, ferries and planes fast disappearing. Occupancy rates at hotels are around 90 percent and in some destinations fully booked.

Tickets for ferry services are selling fast, increased over Easter 2020 and above 90 percent capacity. Indicative of the demand, the country’s largest coastal shipping company, Attica Group, has added a 1,700-passenger ferry this year to meet the demand for island destinations.

Seats on board ferries to the Cyclades over Holy Week are fully booked as are those to the South Aegean islands and to Rhodes.

Meanwhile, according to Eurocontrol, the number of flights to Greece this month is expected to increase by 10 to 15 percent compared to 2022, which had already exceeded pre-pandemic figures for the same month.

The number of scheduled flights at Athens International Airport is also on the rise while Greece’s 14 regional airports are expecting 1,190 aircraft arrivals from Holy Wednesday to Easter Monday.

Top Easter holiday destinations, according to the Hellenic Hoteliers Federation (POX), are Corfu, Hydra, Chios, Ioannina, Patmos, Loutra Edipsos (Evia), Kavala, Thassos, Pelion, Santorini, Mykonos, Crete, the South Aegean, Halkidiki and the Peloponnese.

Commenting on the news, Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias said he was expecting a good Easter period “with many smiles for the tourism industry, which is already seeing an upward trend for 2023. We saw this early on”, he said.

According to AEGEAN, Greece’s national carrier, inbound flights to Athens are up by as much as 80 percent and to Thessaloniki also going strong. Leading Greek destinations for those flying out of Athens are Mytilini, Heraklion, Chios, Rhodes, Paros, Limnos, Santorini and Karpathos and out of Thessaloniki: Mykonos, Santorini, Chios, Limnos, Mytilini and Chania.

Top destinations for those flying out of Athens abroad for Easter are Zurich, Geneva, Amsterdam, Brussels, Munich, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, London, Milan, Larnaca, and Sofia.