Industry Reports & Trends

Greece dropped two places in the third annual Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2009, published by the World Economic Forum, as it ranked 24th among 133 countries.

Hotel suppliers in the tourism industry may count up to a 275-million-euro fall in revenue this year if, according to a possible scenario, Greek tourism slumps 10 percent in overnights, GBR Consulting reported recently.

Greek tourism destinations may see a drop of up to 50 percent in bookings from the U.S., the president of the Hellenic-American Chamber of Tourism, Yiorgos Trivizas, said recently.

Overnight accommodation in Athens saw a 25.9 percent drop in all hotel categories in December 2008 when compared with the year before, the Athens-Attica Hoteliers’ Association said recently.

Greece presented a weak inbound performance January through August 2008, on a scale from zero percent and below, according to figures from the IPK International’s European Travel Monitor included within the ITB World Travel Trends Report 2008/2009. Cyprus was included among the countries that produced an inbound performance from one to four percent for the same period.

The tourism traffic to Chalkidiki recorded a five percent increase in 2008 over 2007, according to local tourism professionals who calculate the increase in tourism revenue at seven percent for the same period of comparison.

A Eurobank survey predicts a significant slowdown in arrivals of tourists from abroad to Greece in 2009.

The president of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, Nikos Angelopoulos, recently called for urgent measures to support and strengthen the tourism sector in order to minimize the losses that are expected in 2009.

Tour operators have improved holiday offers to Greece and promote a wide variety of packages such as adventure travel, spa, island tours, city breaks and wedding packages to show that there is much more to Greece than just beaches, according to this year’s “2009 Travel Trends Report” of ABTA-The Travel Association.

Greece cannot compete on a price basis with new destinations under its current hospitality cost structure but the country has the necessary element to reinvent itself, reshape its product, and market itself efficiently in order to maintain the positive publicity and the momentum gained by the successful 2004 Olympic Games, a recent study said.