ECONOMY

Fewer tourists, more spending in H1, data shows

Fewer tourists, more spending in H1, data shows

A slight drop in the number of tourists visiting Greece in the first half of 2019 was more than offset by a significant rise in per capita spending, data published by the Bank of Greece show.

The number of visitors in the first half was 9.407 million, a 0.5 percent drop from the previous year’s 9.456 million. But revenue rose 15.3 percent, to 5.509 billion euros, meaning that per capita spending increased 16.4 percent.

As far as actual visitors are concerned, there was a 5.2 percent drop in arrivals from the other 27 European Union member-states, to 6.376 million, but an 11 percent rise in non-EU visitors, to 3.031 million.

Visitors from Germany dropped 7.1 percent, to 1.352 million, while those from the UK rose 4 percent, to 1.101 million. There were also increases in the number of visitors from France (528,000 +15.2 pct), the US (422,000, +21.4 pct) and Russia (153,000, +0.5 pct).

German tourists spent 944 million euros (-0.2 pct), followed by the British (752 million, +7.3 pct), the Americans (389 million, +24.4 pct) and the French (359 million, +32.2 pct).

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