By L. Karageorgos
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Tourist arrivals from Greece’s southeast European neighbors have posted a massive increase over the current economic recession in the country, according to figures collected by the country’s statistical service and recently broken down by “N”, with just four countries – Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia and Albania – accounting for a 115.6-percent hike between 2009 and 2016.
According to the Hellenic Statistical Authority (EL.STAT), the same upward trend was evident in 2016 and is forecast to have continued over the current season.
The surge in arrivals from neighboring countries, however, still lags in terms of revenue per tourist, when compared with other west European markets. Analysts have pointed out that holiday-makers from neighboring country take more frequent but shorter trips to Greece, with resulting transactions lower in frequency and value. As a rule of thumb, moreover, tourists from SE European countries also tend to have less disposable income for holidays than their counterparts in other European countries.
In terms of absolute figures, tourists from Bulgaria, Romania, Albania and Serbia together reached 3.66 million in 2015, up from 1.697 million in 2009.
What’s even more noteworthy is the fact that the number of visits to Greece by citizens from the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (fYRoM) in 2015 alone reached 3.023 million. That figure wasn’t included in the overall numbers for SE Europe countries because EL.STAT didn’t count such arrivals from fYRoM in 2009 as tourists.
Nevertheless, people from the neighboring country are the biggest bloc of tourists and visitors to Greece at present, with many day-trips included in the total.
As far as the other Balkan countries are concerned, the number of arrivals from Bulgaria reached 1.9 million in 2015, up dramatically from 657,000 in 2009, an increase of 189 percent.
The number of Albanian tourists to Greece also doubled over the same period, to 491,000 from roughly 234,000 in 2009.
Overall, nearly 24 million tourists visited Greece in 2015, up just less than 15 million in 2009, a figure that doesn’t include cruise ship arrivals. The number of arrivals for 2016 was put at 24.799 million, while the target for 2017 is 26.5 million and 28.5 million when including the cruise sector, according to the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE).
Beyond “traditional” markets, such as Germany, the UK, France and Italy, where the majority of tourists to Greece hail from, arrivals from Turkey were up by more than one million, comparing 2009 to 2016; 1.2 million higher over the same eight-year period in terms of arrivals from Asia.
Although still only a fraction of the overall number, Chinese tourists reached 55,000 in 2016, a more than seven-fold increase from the paltry 7,793 that were recorded in 2009 by EL.STAT.
