By Vickys Kourlibini
Foreign tourist arrivals are on fire, with occupancy levels reaching 90% already in July, and popular tourist destinations sinking.
According to the entrepreneurs in the area, June went very well, which is also evident from the first data from the airports. It is characteristic that in many cases the performance of tourism is already exceeded before the outbreak of the pandemic. It is noted that in 2019, which was a landmark year for Greek tourism, we had over 30 million visits from abroad and receipts that exceeded 18 billion euros.
According to data from the South Aegean Initiative for Tourism, Rhodes, Kos, Mykonos, Santorini “took off” in June, recording more arrivals compared to 2019, at least until the 26th of the month. Specifically in the Dodecanese, Rhodes and Kos are moving towards increases compared to 2019 of 8% and 3% respectively, while in the Cyclades the percentages are higher, 22% for Mykonos and 49% for Santorini.
As he points out, already so far, this year’s April has exceeded the arrivals of April 2019 by 13% and May by 5%. Likewise, June 2022 presents a truly impressive course, surpassing by 13% June of the last pre-pandemic year.
It is typical, only during the first 26 days of June, according to the official data of Fraport and CAA, at the five international airports of the South Aegean (Mykonos, Santorini, Rhodes, Kos, Karpathos) 4,898 planes landed carrying 771,941 passengers, out of of which approximately half (376,415,042) chose Rhodes, 182,410 Kos, 114,873 Santorini, 83,581 Mykonos and 14,662 Karpathos.
High performance in Crete
According to the report, hoteliers are hoping based on bookings that they will reach 100% occupancy as we approach the heart of summer, with Heraklion airport coming in second in terms of arrivals after Eleftherios Venizelos.
For the island, leading tourism group Tui expects a record season, while overall this year’s traffic will approach 2019 levels.
The head of Tui Germany Stefan Baumert emphasized that classic destinations such as Spain, Turkey and Greece remain at the top of demand, while Portugal, Cyprus and Egypt are showing strong growth. “Greece will continue to have strong demand. Especially for Crete, a record season is predicted,” he said.
Athens takes off
The Minister of Tourism, Vassilis Kikilias, referred to the data that demonstrate the dynamic recovery trajectory of Greek tourism, in his greeting at the international conference “Aviation Event”.
As he underlined, despite the new global crises and despite the fact that important tourist markets – such as Russia due to the war and China due to Covid-19 – are absent this year, the traffic at the Athens International Airport, as well as at the larger airports of the country is already almost at the levels of 2019.
“I am very happy to see that the messages so far are very positive. According to the latest figures, in June, the traffic on “Eleftherios Venizelos” has returned to almost 94% compared to the levels of the same month in 2019 and flights at 97%. The performance at all 14 regional airports of Fraport is also excellent. At the same time, the data of the Bank of Greece for April show an increase of 7.5% compared to April 2019 in terms of travel traffic, while we are waiting for the data of May to be announced”, pointed out Mr. Kikilias .
Source: Capital
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