UK tourists grow by a million
Considerable rise in the spending per capita ratio in 2022, as revenues reached 97% of 2019’s
Although total travel revenues in 2022 did not exceed those of the last full year before the pandemic, 2019, receipts from Greece’s key markets of the United Kingdom, France and Germany increased by 21.8%, 16.4% and 10% respectively compared to that year. At the same time, the average expenditure per trip among all tourists who visited the country increased last year by 9.7%.
These figures, released on Tuesday by the Bank of Greece, are very encouraging for 2023, as last year’s performance of Greek tourism, which is approaching its full recovery after the pandemic, came with the markets of Russia and Ukraine having frozen due to the war, and China remaining sluggish due to the pandemic. Those three countries used to contribute over 1 million visitors in previous years.
The driving force behind the increase in average expenditure per capita, as well as the recovery to 97% of 2019 revenue, was the receipts from the three main European markets for Greece. Especially from Germany, travel receipts in 2022 amounted to 3.255 billion euros, compared to €2.95 billion in 2019 – i.e. 10% higher. There were also more Germans who visited the country, totaling 4.35 million last year compared to 4.02 million in 2019 – i.e. 8.1% more.
Receipts from France last year rose 16.4% on 2019 to €1.268 billion, up from €1.08 billion then. Accordingly, visitors from France increased by 14%, to 1.75 million people, from 1.54 million in 2019.
However, the largest increase compared to pre-pandemic levels was recorded by travel receipts from Britain. In particular, they amounted to €3.123 billion, from €2.56 billion in 2019, while traveler numbers from Britain last year grew by 28.2% compared to 2019, to 4.485 million people, from 3.499 million.
Receipts from the US last year also increased, albeit marginally, by 0.6% compared to 2019, to €1.95 billion, from €1.18 billion, despite the fact that travel traffic from the US did not fully recover to pre-pandemic levels and stood at 1.08 million visitors, down from 1.17 million in 2019.
