Industry Reports & Trends

As a destination Athens is deteriorating and losing any grounds it had intended to gain and this ultimately cannot be considered a result of the global economic crisis, according to Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association President Yiannis Retsos.

Greece is the fourth most popular tourism destination in the European Union for 2010, according to the Eurobarometer survey on the attitudes of Europeans towards tourism that was released last month. Most popular destination is Spain, followed by Italy and France.

With a 400,000-euro marketing investment, Greek gastronomy over the next five years could become one of the main reasons to choose Greece as a holiday destination, the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) pointed out last month during the presentation of the study “Gastronomy in the Marketing of Greek Tourism.”

The Hellenic Federation of Hoteliers recently questioned a government decision that sees a 26 percent reduction of beneficiaries for the Workers’ Welfare Foundation’s social tourism program (subsidized holidays).

A rrivals of foreigners to Greece have recorded a 6.7 percent decline for the first nine months of 2009, according to figures recently released by the National Statistical Service of Greece and compiled by the boarder survey of the Bank of Greece.

Foreign arrivals to Greece are expected to rise slightly by some two to three percent this year, while repercussions from the 2008 economic crisis will result to tourism revenue continuing its negative trend, according to a recent announcement by the Research Institute for Tourism and Forecasts (ITEP).

ITB Berlin, the world’s leading travel trade show, on 10-14 March will await the whole variety of the international travel sector on the fairgrounds of Messe Berlin: destinations, tour operators, booking systems, carriers and hotels.

The first half of 2009 saw foreign arrivals decline by 10.3 percent compared with those of the first half of 2008, according to a survey on nonresident arrivals from abroad for the first half of 2009. The survey was carried out by the Bank of Greece at the country’s border stations (airports, ports, roads and railways) and the data was released by the National Statistical Service of Greece.

Athens hotel bookings have been in “free fall” as of December 2008, which translates to a 12 percent decrease up until September 2009 and an eight percent drop in the average price per room, stressed the President of the Athens-Attica Hotel Association Yiannis Retsos at the association’s 40th Annual General Assembly.

Air arrivals to Greek airports appeared reduced by 7.8 percent for the January-October 2009 period while for the month of October the decline reached 6.2 percent, the Institute of Tourist Research and Forecasts (ITEP) reported recently.