Industry Reports & Trends

Travel professionals said last month that Greeks and foreign visitors did not opt to spend their holidays in the Greek capital. According to the Athens-Attica Hotel Association, Athens recorded low bookings last December due to “the complete absence of a festive climate.”

Many Greeks chose to stay home this past holiday season and avoided traditional Christmas and New Year domestic destinations as travel within the country declined some 25 percent, Yiorgos Telonis, president of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) told GTP last month.

Hotel occupancy in October 2010 may have dropped 4.4 percent, compared with the same month in 2009, but it was considered an improve­ment as in September 2010 the hotel room occupancy rate was down 9.2 percent, according to the Athens-Attica Hotel Association.

The Greek government places great importance on the tourism sector as it can help the country survive the economic crisis, Deputy Tourism and Culture Minister George Nikitiadis told journalists during his visit last month to the global meetings and events exhibition EIBTM in Barcelona, Spain.

The city of Athens continues to attract visitors despite the serious problems experienced in 2010, according to the Athens-Attica Hotel Association’s latest study on customer satisfaction and performance of hotels in Attica. The study was presented at the association’s 41st Annual General Assembly last month at the Grande Bretagne hotel.

Foreign arrivals at 13 of Greece’s main airports increased by 0.85 percent year-on-year in September while the number of foreign visitors in Greece dropped 0.57 percent during the first nine months of the year, according to Civil Aviation Authority data released last month.

Hotels in the Greek capital saw a 6.1 percent revenue drop for the first eight months of the year while Attica is going through two of the most difficult months of the year (September-October) that will determine the size of the losses, according to the Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association.

Greece dropped 12 places in the Global Competi­ti­veness Report 2010-2011, released by the World Economic Forum last month, as it slid from 71st place to 83rd in the global ranking of 139 countries.

Tourism revenue in the Greek capital during August decreased by 14 percent following a 15 percent drop in July, Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association President Yiannis Retsos recently told Greek journalists.

Greek tourism managed to withstand obstacles this season despite the economic crisis and hardships created by demonstrations and strikes, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Yiorgos Nikitiadis said last month.