Greece eyes new record

GREECE is on track to achieve another record year for international arrivals as the tourism sector leads the country’s economic revival.

Having already posted five consecutive years of record visitor numbers, Greece is this year expecting to top the landmark 30 million arrivals recorded in 2017.

“This is a very big number given the size of our country - it’s almost three times the population of Greece,” said Greece Trade Commissioner Katia Gkikiza, who outlined the country’s tourism resurgence at this week’s Greece and Mediterranean Travel Centre season launch (TD yesterday).

“The figures we have available for 2018 so far show we reached 10.5 million visitors by Jun, and during the same period of 2017 we had 8.5 million visitors, so it seems like we’re going for a new record again this year,” she said.

While overall arrivals grew 7.4% last year, the number of Australians visiting Greece had almost doubled to 324,000, making it the country’s fastest growing international market.

Gkikiza said the Australian market was especially well aligned to Greece’s rapidly growing luxury tourism sector.

While total hotel stock in Greece had increased 0.5% last year, the number of five-star properties increased by 11.7%, which Gkikiza said presented an opportunity for travel agents to target big-spending Australians.

See also today’s photo page.