Greece Fast Approaching 30 Million Traveler Arrival Milestone

Greece is quickly approaching 30 million traveler arrivals for this year with Bank of Greece (BoG) data revealing that 27.7 million arrived in the first nine months of 2023 paving the way for a new record.

More specifically, arrivals in the January-September period were up by 17.3 percent compared to the year-ago period boosting travel receipts by 15.2 percent.

In January-September 2023, Greece welcomed 27.7 million travelers, up from 23.6 million in 2022. Broken down, flows through airports increased by 11.7 percent and by 36.7 percent via road border-crossing points.

Travel arrivals from the EU rose by 15.0 percent year-on-year and non-EU arrivals by 21.2 percent. Leading the way, travelers from Germany grew by 6.5 percent, from France (+5.3 percent), from the UK (+0.8 percent), and from the US (+32.6 percent).

Source: Bank of Greece

In the nine-month period under review, travel receipts came to 17,919.5 million euros driven by strong spending from EU residents, up by 11.7 percent to 9,981.6 million euros and by non-EU nationals up by 18.3 percent to 7,458.8 million euros.

Key source markets for the period were Germany with receipts up by 4.4 percent to 2.965.7 million euros, France (+10.6 percent to 1.290.7 million euros), the UK (+6.8 percent to 3.014.7 million euros), and the US (+13.5 percent to 1,115.7 million euros).

According to BoG data, the number of inbound travelers increased by 12.7 percent in September to 5,141.4 thousand who boosted travel receipts by 14.6 percent year-on-year.

Earlier this month, two former Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) presidents – Yiannis Retsos and Andreas Andreadis – estimated that tourism revenues this year would exceed 20 billion euros, up from 18.2 billion euros in pre-Covid 2019.