Greek Tourism Rebounds with More than 8.6 Million Visitors in 2021

The Bank of Greece announced on Friday that more than 8.6 million tourists visited Greece from January to August this year. The bank reported that this is a 79% jump from last year’s visitors in the same time frame.

The tourism industry in Greece is on the upswing with a 135 % increase in earnings from 2020. The revenue for the first eight months of 2021 totaled 6.6 billion euros.

Greece welcomed more than two million visitors to its shores during just the months of July and August of 2021 — more than any other European nation — marking real success in its vital tourism industry despite the pandemic that is still raging across the world.

The two most popular months for Greek tourism haven’t seen that many visitors since 2019, which was a record year for Greek tourism.

Greece Tourist Minister Assures US Travelers They Can Still Visit Country

Greece’s new Minister of Tourism, Vassilis Kikilias, said in a statement last month that tourists from the United States can continue to visit Greece until the end of the tourist season without becoming subject to additional COVID-19 related restrictions.

“Greece will continue to receive visitors from the US until the end of the tourist season,” Kikilias assured the public, according to a report from SchengenVisaInfo.com.

Kikilias reiterated that the US is a major market “which creates added value in the country’s economy.”

Per capita, American tourists spend more than 1,000 euros on their trips to Greece, making them among the top international travelers who spend the most while on their Greek vacations.

“Visitors and tourism professionals in the United States of America, and, of course, Greeks abroad, have shown and continue to show their love for Greece and their trust in the Greek tourism product,” Kikilias pointed out.

Although the European statistics authority EUROSTAT showed in its most recent report that Greece experienced a 60% decrease in stays in hotel rooms and other accommodations this year, the 2021 tourism season salvaged a great deal of business through prudent management.

This includes a successful vaccination program, which was targeted at residents of islands and those in the tourist industry in particular. The inoculation campaign resulted in over 65.8% of Greeks now having at least the first dose of a vaccine, and 63.4% of the population being fully immunized.

“Vaccination is the only way to freedom not for others, but for ourselves and our immediate family environment, the people we love. We must protect them,” Theoharis said during the Summer tourism season.

The World Travel and Tourism Council noted earlier this summer that the Hellenic Republic set an example for other nations regarding actions taken to revitalize its economy through the travel and tourism industry.

The relative success of the season is due not only to the country’s well-established hospitality industry but also the nation’s acceptance of a range of different vaccines — not only the major Western inoculations — for proof of inoculation.

Greece recognizes the most vaccines of any European country, which means that travellers from all over the world inoculated with one of these products — including Sputnik V from Russia and Sinovax from China — are allowed to enter the country and are exempted from quarantine restrictions.

The travel website VisaGuide.World has created a tool that lets potential travelers know if their vaccine will be valid in the country they intend to visit.