New 11-Month High for Greece with 35M Tourist Arrivals in 2024

In line with forecasts for another record year in tourism, Greece welcomed a total of 35 million travelers in the January-November 2024 period marking a 9.7% rise over the same 11-month period in 2023 when 31.9 million visited the country, according to the Bank of Greece (BoG).

In the period under review, traveler flows, which exclude cruise passengers, grew by 10.2% through airports and by 9.6%, as did road border-crossing points.

In the January-November 2023 period, travel receipts also increased by 4.9% year‑on‑year reaching a total of 21,266.9 million euros.

Central bank analysts attribute the positive performance to an increase in receipts generated by tourists from the EU, up by 6.3% to 11,713.5 million euros and to spending by non-EU nationals which was up by 0.5%.

Driving tourism revenues for Greece in the given period were travelers from Germany with receipts up by 3.5% to 3,645.7 million euros; from Italy (+13.0% to 1,207.0 million euros); and from the US (+13.3% to 1,528.4 million euros).

In the same period, traveler spending from France dropped by 11.7% to 1,246.1 million euros; from the UK by 3.9% to 3,144.9 million euros; and from Russia by 53.3% to 14.6 million euros.

According to the BoG data, average spending per trip in the period under review dropped by 5.4%.