Tourism: August performance brings new revenue record closer

Her Vickis Kourlibini

Traditionally, August is for Greece the month with the highest tourist traffic, the month that brings the most income to the tourism “basket”. This year, however, and while the primary goal of the entrepreneurs in the area is to cover the lost ground created by the pandemic in relation to the record year of 2019, the tourism performance of the month we are passing through is even more important.

According to the tourism market, arrivals from abroad this month have developed above forecasts, while receipts, according to the first indications at least, will reach pre-pandemic levels. The satisfaction is obvious and estimates say that at the end of the season we will manage to reach twenty billion euros in revenue.

Indicative of the great demand from all the main foreign markets are the data of the recovery tracker of the Institute of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises. Figures from travel data measurement firm OAG suggest final arrivals. Last week, 960 thousand seats were scheduled on incoming international flights. The momentum of arrivals remains high throughout the month, with next week’s scheduled air seats reaching 957 thousand. All popular tourist destinations are recording very high occupancy levels, at least 90% with domestic tourism at the heart of this summer.

The airports with the highest tourist traffic are Athens, Heraklion, Rhodes, Corfu, Thessaloniki, Kos, Chania, Santorini, Zakynthos and Mykonos. First in the arrivals for the whole of August are British tourists, followed by the markets of Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Switzerland, Austria and Poland.

Only for Athens, in August the scheduled air seats from abroad are 1.146 million, when last year in the same month they were 971 thousand, while in 2019 they were 1.212 million. And September seems to be going very well for Athens, with the available seats reaching 1.052 million, when in 2019 – a record year for Greek tourism – it was 1.073 million.

It is recalled that 2019 was the record year for Greek tourism, with revenues of over 18 billion euros and more than 30 million arrivals from abroad.

It is noted that in August 2019 travel receipts had reached the level of 4.183 billion euros, compared to 3.601 billion euros in the corresponding month of 2018. The increase in travel receipts was due to the increase in the average expenditure per trip by 4.8%, as and to the increase in inbound travel traffic by 11% compared to August 2018.

Excellent July

August’s strong performance follows a very good July for revenue. German and British markets moved last month above July 2019 in many destinations such as Rhodes, where Germans are 24.6% more and British 21%. In Chania, German tourists are at +78.3% and British at +43.2%.

The increased tourist flow from abroad is also the latest data from Fraport Greece. At the level of 7 months (January-July), the performance of 2019 was almost equalized, as this year 16.21 million passengers were transported compared to 16.25 million passengers in the corresponding period of 2019, i.e. a decrease of only 0.2%. In July in fact, 5.91 million passengers were handled in the 14 regional airports of Fraport Greece, marking an increase of 11.1% compared to 2019 and 64.8% compared to last year.

At the same time, at “Eleftherios Venizelos” airport in July 2022 compared to July 2019 we had 29% more arrivals from Germany, 15% from France, from Israel 19% from Serbia 257% and from Turkey 177%.

Already, according to the latest data from the Central Bank, in May the revenues reached 1.41 billion euros, compared to 222 million euros in the corresponding month of 2021. In the five months, 2.5 billion euros have entered the tourist basket. The increase in travel receipts was driven by a 552.9% increase in inbound travel traffic as average spend per trip fell by 2.2%.

The barrage of arrivals from abroad will continue this season

The CAA’s provisional statistics on airport passenger traffic in June show that the total number of passengers handled amounted to 8,398,777, marking an increase of (+)167.6% compared to the corresponding period in 2021. 45,216 were foreign, recording an increase of 64%, compared to the corresponding period of June 2021 where 41,107 flights had taken place. In particular, for the arrivals of foreign flight passengers in June 2022, we had an increase of 190.5% corresponding to 3,480,812 passengers, compared to the corresponding month of 2021 when the arrivals from abroad were 1,198,398 passengers.

Now, and based on how Greek destinations fared in July and August, interest in bookings is skyrocketing in September as well. The first information says that the occupancies will be maintained at 80%. Already the big foreign tour operators have added beds and expanded the tourist packages. Everything shows that the extension of this year’s tourist season is possible and arrivals will remain at high levels throughout the autumn.