One million tourists have landed in Mykonos and Santorini this year

By Vickys Kourlibini

The country’s two most popular and expensive tourist destinations sank this year. According to data from the South Aegean Tourism Initiative, from the beginning of the season until August 21, Mykonos had already reached 450,000 air arrivals from abroad, while Santorini exceeded half a million international arrivals.

These are very high numbers, with the two high-end destinations having overcome the gap compared to 2019, the record year for Greek tourism, and showing occupancies that reached 100% in mid-August.

Indicative of increased tourist traffic is that according to the Bank of Greece, (six-month data) the incoming travel traffic was 8 million foreign visitors, a number increased by 360% compared to the corresponding period of 2021 (1.7 million visitors).

High performance throughout August

The first twenty days of August close with an increase of 16% for the destinations of the South Aegean, compared to the corresponding period of 2019. Rhodes, Kos, Mykonos and Santorini, for which there are comparative data, record arrivals, as they attracted from 1st to 21st August more than 700,000 passengers.

In particular, Rhodes has already exceeded 1.7m. visitors from abroad, Kos has welcomed more than 800,000, and Karpathos approaches 57,000.

Adding together the passengers who have arrived from April to July, via “Eleftherios Venizelos” at the airports of the South Aegean islands, international arrivals already exceed 4 million before the end of August.

Airline arrivals barrage

Meanwhile, all indications from bookings and flight scheduling point to an equally strong continuation for both the rest of the last summer month and the autumn.

In the week that begins, according to the recovery tracker of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, we have 951 thousand scheduled seats on international flights. Then, in the week of September 5 to 11, an additional 868 thousand in inbound flights.

As mentioned by the Minister of Tourism Vassilis Kikilias, speaking to “K”, the extension of the tourist season was one of the main goals from the beginning and, in terms of the start of the season, we achieved it. “We believe that we will manage to arrive as late as possible and at the end of it, as long as we do not have unexpected developments that will affect tourism as well. The messages we receive from tour operators are very encouraging, there is a demand for travel packages for the whole autumn, even for December,” he said characteristically.