Tourism: The American market is ‘flying’

By Vickys Kourlibini

The increase in travel traffic from an extremely important tourist market for Greece is impressive. According to data from the Ministry of Tourism, arrivals from the USA in June recorded a 50% increase compared to the corresponding period of 2019. At that time, 135 thousand travelers had landed in Greece, while revenues from the American market in that month reached 135 millions of euros.

It is noted that this year there are 63 direct flights per week from the USA to “El. Venizelos” with American airlines. The companies that make the direct flights are Delta Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines, while Emirates also offers seats.

This is a very important market for Greek tourism and especially for the hotel market of Athens and Santorini, reaching shares of even 50%. At the same time, these are tourists with high consumption and average spending on their holidays. The figures of the last seasons prove it:

Last year, according to the data of the Bank of Greece, the receipts from the USA increased compared to 2020 by 605.3% and amounted to 607 million euros. Traffic increased by 271.6% to 396 thousand travelers. In 2019, a record year for Greek tourism, receipts from the US reached 1.187 million euros and travel traffic was 1.179 million travelers.

The most popular destinations for US tourists in Greece are Attica and the South Aegean. According to the Bank of Greece, in 2019 12,457 thousand overnight stays were recorded (+52.3% compared to 2016) with a market share of 5.4%, when in 2016 8,178 thousand were recorded and a market share of 4.3%. In the period 2019-2020 overnight stays fell by -88.8% (to 1.4 million) with the share of the American market amounting to 2.2%. Finally, receipts from the USA in the period 2016-2019 showed an increase of 63.3% (from €728 million in 2016 to €1.2 billion in 2019)

In March, however, due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, fears were expressed about whether American tourists would travel this year, which fortunately did not come true.

Positive sign

At the same time, other important foreign tourist markets also show particular momentum, with arrivals from Austria showing an increase of 32%, from Israel 24%, Canada 12%, France 8% and Great Britain 1%.

In particular with regard to France, data from sales show that Greece is in 1st place in terms of average expenditure – that is, the foreign exchange brought by French tourists to our country – with an increase of 18% respectively compared to 2019.

High occupancy in June

June, according to the report, recorded very high occupancies, at 80% in popular destinations such as Crete, while occupancies moved even higher in Mykonos and Santorini. And for the Ionian islands, the demand for travel packages is at very satisfactory levels, while the occupancy levels in Rhodes and Kos are already reaching the levels of 2019.

July entered even stronger and it is estimated that by the end of the month all the popular destinations will be fully booked. With bookings and occupancies moving at such high levels, it seems possible that 18 billion euros will enter the tourist basket, i.e. the amount collected in 2019.

Season until December

In order to increase tourist revenues, so that they exceed the levels of 2019, the bet is the lengthening of the tourist season, through agreements with tour operators and airlines to maintain tourist traffic.

The Minister of Tourism Vassilis Kikilias, in an interview, talked about the strategy of lengthening the tourist season, which – as he mentioned – this year started much earlier and is expected to end in December, while he particularly focused on putting Athens back on the tourist map.

“As you can see, many of the travelers who visit our country now choose to stay in Athens. That is, while in all the previous years the capital was an intermediate destination for anyone who wanted to go to the Greek islands, this has now changed. Athens has acquired another dynamic and a series of important investments have contributed to this, in the Athenian “Riviera” and elsewhere in the basin”, he emphasized.