By Michalis Matsigkos

 

Greek tourism is on track to break new revenue record in 2023, according to Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias.

 

"In 2022, we reached 17.6 billion euros in revenue, 2.6 billion more than the budget," Mr. Kikilias told Naftemporiki TV in an interview. He noted that revenues of more than 18.5 billion euros are expected in 2023.

 

He also stressed that the average expenditure has increased by 8% per traveler. Mr. Kikilias said that there is also a campaign for winter destinations and for Greek city break destinations.

 

In a recent article in Naftemporiki, Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias noted that "for 2023 the data available to us so far makes us optimistic that we will do even better and that the target of increasing tourism revenue by at least 10% compared to 2022 is entirely achievable". "In recent years, the Ministry of Tourism has 'transformed' into an economic, development and investment portfolio, which is the 'locomotive' of the development of the Greek economy,” he wrote.

 

The first signs from 2023 justify the optimistic expectations that Greek tourism will break new records this year. Passenger traffic in the Athens International Airport showed a spectacular increase in April, totaling 2,136,956, up 26.8% compared with the same month last year and up 7.6% from April 2019.

 

According to the data of the Civil Aviation Service (CAA), during the first quarter of 2023, a total of 6,877,069 international and domestic passengers passed through the country's airports. This figure represents a 52.8% increase compared to the same period in 2022 and a 2.9% increase compared to the first quarter of 2019.

 

Passenger traffic at the country's 14 regional airports managed by Fraport Greece was also at high levels in the first four months of 2023, surpassing the performance of 2019. 

 

At the same time, Greece is aiming to attract digital nomads in order to become a pan-European telecommuting destination. Recently, Cisco and the South Aegean region presented a joint roadmap of actions that highlights the island of Rhodes as a hybrid work destination by hosting 17 fully remote Cisco employees, from all over Europe, for a period of 3 months.