Greece Ranks 35th Out of 88 Countries in 1st Meaningful Tourism Index

Despite pledges and actions towards a more sustainable tourism model, Greece still has a long way to go in terms of achieving “meaningful tourism” for all stakeholders involved.

More specifically, Greece ranked 35th out of 88 countries in the first Meaningful Tourism Index published this month.

The emerging meaningful travel trend involves travelers making choices based on the benefits and satisfaction of the host community and local people, which includes employees and services providers, and the environment.

Photo source: Meaningful Tourism.

The new annual index published by the Hamburg-based Meaningful Tourism Center ranks the sustainability of 88 countries which together account for 90 percent of global tourism turnover, based on their performance in 72 indicators covering seven categories.

Greece failed to make it into the Top 10 in all seven categories achieving a total of 41 out of 100 possible points.

Source: Meaningful Tourism.

The Top 3 destinations achieving high scores in all indicators on the Meaningful Tourism Index for 2023 were Aruba, Iceland and Switzerland, garnering more than 50 percent of all possible points, while demonstrating at the same time that there is still a long way to go to reach a sustainable form of international tourism, said Meaningful Tourism Center in its statement.

The poorest performers in terms of meaningful tourism were Lebanon, Nigeria and Iraq.

Source: Meaningful Tourism.

“Our approach is based on the insight that sustainable tourism can only be created if all stakeholders are satisfied with the benefits they get out of tourism. Happy locals and happy employees produce satisfied visitors, who spend more, care more about the local environment and recommend the destination to their friends,” said Wolfgang Georg Arlt, CEO Meaningful Tourism Center and head of research for the 2023 index.

The center also announced that it will be releasing “Meaningful Tourism indexes” for cities and hotels later this year.