More and more tourists are getting on the plane to Greece

By Vicky Kourlimbini

Each week is already evolving better than the previous one in terms of air arrivals from abroad, with the season starting now for most of the popular destinations.

As shown in the recovery tracker of the Institute of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises, with data from the travel data measurement company OAG, in the week from 4 to 10 April, 270 thousand air seats have been scheduled, increased by 12% compared to the previous week ( March 28 to April 3 where we had 241 thousand scheduled seats on incoming international flights).

The second week of April is even better with a further increase of 16% and 313 thousand positions from abroad.

These are figures indicative of the rise in tourism demand for Greece, with market entrepreneurs saying that traffic is evolving well given the “freeze” in the rate of bookings compared to expected, due to the Russian-Ukrainian war and rising transport costs. and goods, which is a given that also entails the prices of travel packages.

According to information from the hoteliers, the average occupancy across the country is around 40% with increasing trends.

More English tourists

In the foreign markets from which the scheduled airline seats come, Germany comes first, followed by the United Kingdom as a country of origin for tourists.

However, despite the fact that Germany is the largest and most important reservoir for Greek Tourism, there is a lag in bookings for several weeks, with German tourists appearing so far reluctant to close their holidays. At the same time, there is a great demand for Turkey, due to the low prices.

They are followed by Italy, Cyprus, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium, Romania, Austria, the USA, Spain, Poland and the United Arab Emirates, while Russia is now missing from the program. .

Athens comes first to the main reception airports, followed by Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Corfu, Rhodes, Chania, Santorini, Mykonos and Kos.