ATHENS — The number of foreign tourists visiting
Greece has
sharply increased so far this year, despite soaring inflation and the Ukraine
war, according to official statistics published on Monday.
اضافة اعلان
But the figures remained below the record
pre-pandemic levels of 2019 that helped revive the country’s tourism-dependent
economy after years of crisis.
From January to late August, 19.12 million foreign
tourists flocked to the sun-drenched southern European nation to explore
attractions such as the Athens Acropolis or the Aegean islands, the Bank of
Greece said.
That represented a 121-percent increase on the same
period in 2021, when COVID-19 travel and social restrictions weighed heavily on
the tourism sector.
In August alone, traditionally the peak of the
Mediterranean tourism season, more than 5.8 million foreign visitors came to
Greece, a rise of 44 percent on 2021 figures.
However, tourist numbers in the first eight months
of this year were down 12.4 percent compared with the same period in 2019.
Decades-high
inflation is eating away at the budgets of many European households, while the
number of Russian tourists — frequent visitors to the beaches of Crete or Corfu
— is down sharply due to the fallout from the
Ukraine war and European
sanctions.
Tourism represents a quarter of Greece’s annual
economic output, but questions linger over the future of the sector.
Some islands are becoming saturated with tourists,
whereas others have become so expensive that many Greeks can no longer afford
to live there.
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