New records year after year

Tourism revenues in the January-October 2023 period have already exceeded the total revenues of the last record-breaking year, 2019.

Leading actors in the Greek tourism industry, hoteliers, as well as economists estimate that the country will not only be able to maintain these performances next year, but also to improve them marginally, as long as no unforeseen adverse events affect international travel. However, the margins of Greek tourism businesses’ pricing power are narrowing, as price increases in recent years have raised them to levels that are only marginally competitive with other Mediterranean tourism superpowers such as Italy and Spain.

In addition, increased tourist flows are now also accompanied by major challenges such as the requirement to upgrade infrastructure and manage destinations that show signs of severe saturation during peak months.

Travel receipts in the first 10 months of 2023 amounted to 19.612 billion euros, surpassing by €1.4 billion the corresponding receipts of the entire fiscal year 2019 (€18.2 billion) – a record year so far for Greek tourism.

Given that receipts are growing at a double-digit rate compared to 2019, and that year’s November and December receipts were in the region of €600 million, estimates see the country’s foreign visitor receipts for the whole of this year reaching the level of €20.2-20.3 billion. In other words, they will surpass the 2019 record by €2 billion, or a percentage greater than 10%.

According to the data of the Bank of Greece for the period January-October 2023, the arrivals of non-resident travelers increased by 17% and the related receipts by 14.7% compared to 2022.

It seems clear that the growth potential of Greek tourism not only exists, but is also unexpectedly strong. This was also noted last week by the president of the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE), Yiannis Paraschis, estimating that “as everything shows, the year will close with a single-digit increase in arrivals and a double-digit increase in revenue, compared to the previous reference year, 2019.”