Recent decisions by the US and Israeli governments to warn citizens against travelling to Greece, the former, and a decision to require Israeli citizens to remain in either a seven- or 14-day Covid-19-related quarantine in terms of the latter, have raised concerns and anxiety by Greek tourism officials and operators.
Israel now requires of citizens returning from several countries, including Greece, to submit a negative test in order to remain in seven-day quarantine, or, 14 days in case of no test result.
Across the Atlantic, the influential Center for Disease Control (CD) in Atlanta recommended against US citizens travelling to Greece due to the Covid-19 figures.
The latest setbacks threaten to undermine a target of 50 percent tourist arrivals and revenues for 2021, compared to pre-pandemic 2020 – or 16 million arrivals and nine billion euros in revenues, respectively. The target was already tenuous, at best, given a delay by UK authorities in upgrading Greece in terms of Covid-19 concentration and cases.
According to tourism ministry and Bank of Greece (BoG) figures, a little more than five million tourist arrivals have been recorded in the east Mediterranean country so far in 2021.
