Industry Reports & Trends

Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, recorded a 17.87 percent increase in overnight stays during the first eight months of 2014 compared to last year.

The rapid adoption of tablets and smartphones by consumers around the globe is creating a new business environment for the travel and tourism industry, according to Euromonitor International.

The airports in Athens and Mykonos are among the European airports that had the highest increase in passenger traffic for the month of August this year, according to data released recently by European airport trade body Airports Council International (ACI) Europe.

Greece is among the countries that registered the highest growth in foreign tourist arrivals in the world in the first half of the year, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

International passenger traffic rose 6.7 percent in August, with all regions showing growth over the previous year, according to the global passenger traffic results for August released recently by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).

Athens International Airport “Eleftherios Venizelos” has reported a 23 percent surge in passenger traffic for September, with the figure hitting 1.62 million passengers.

A 35 percent increase in bookings at small, family run, traditional and agrotourism lodgings in Greece was noted this summer, compared to last year, according to the Greek network of rural accommodation, Guest Inn.

Greece experienced increases of 10.4 percent in arrivals and 11 percent in overnight stays in hotels, campsites and other collective accommodation establishments in 2013, according to data from the national statistics office ELSTAT.

During the first eight months of the year, hotels in Athens, Greece, saw 390,000 more overnight stays compared to 2013, according to data revealed at a press conference by the head of the Athens-Attica & Argosaronic Hotel Association, Alexandros Vassilikos.

As social partner to the Greek government in policy-making, the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) has made a series of proposals for the creation of a national strategy for small and medium-sized tourism enterprises in Greece.