Greece welcomed 7.9 million visitors in 2020
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In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, global tourism had its worst year ever in 2020.
Europe recorded a decrease of 70%, recording 221 million arrivals compared to 746 million in 2019.
Meanwhile, Greece recorded a decline of 76.5%, welcoming only 7.4 million arrivals in 2020 compared to 31.3 million in 2019.
In the period January-December 2020, Greece registered 5.9 million arrivals by air, from 21.5 million a year earlier, a decrease of 72.5%.
Between January and December 2020, five airports recorded a decrease of more than 1 million international air arrivals:
Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos recorded 2 million arrivals (down 68.5% from 2019)
Heraklion International Airport “Nikos Kazantzakis” recorded 902,000 arrivals (down 72.7% from 2019)
Religious tourism, film productions, gastronomy, history and mythology are some of the untapped tourism products that Greece should further develop and promote in the next years in order to attract more travelers, according to Marketing Greece CEO
Ioanna Dretta.
Apostolos Aivalis, syllabus manager at
KnowCrunch, Dretta underlined that Greece’s summer products generate about 70-80 percent of the country’s total tourism revenues that directly contribute to its GDP with 13 billion euros annually.
“However,
today’s travelers demand more experiences that go beyond a nice hotel, the beach and the sun,” she said, highlighting that Greece is the 5th largest tourism brand and should be promoted as such.
Greece Pushes EU to Endorse Vaccine Certificates to Open Tourism
February 23, 2021
Greece leads the campaign in the EU for vaccine certificates. Credit: Iantomferry, CC BY 3.0/Wikipedia
Greece is pushing its EU partners to approve Covid-19 vaccine certificates which would allow for the opening of travel throughout Europe, the Greek tourism minister said on Tuesday.
In an interview with the
Financial Times, Harry Theocharis called on EU leaders to “move more quickly” to embrace the vaccine certificates.
“Looking at the reaction of some countries to vaccination certificate proposals, I feel there’s a lot of short-sightedness. There’s more to be done now to prepare ourselves,” Theocharis told the British paper.
The recovery of Greece’s
tourism industry – from the impact of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic – will be a gradual,
slow process that will take three to four years, Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) President
Yiannis Retsos said on Wednesday, during an online discussion with representatives of the country’s banking and industrial sector.
According to Retsos, the year 2021 will be difficult, with the pandemic’s effect on tourism proving worse than expected as indicated by the epidemiological data. However, he expressed certainty that the tourism industry would eventually recover and estimated that it may take up to four years for the sector to reach the record levels of 2019.