Greece headed for ‘record year’ for tourism, says minister
Source: NEOS KOSMOS
Greece is on track for “another record year” for tourism in 2025, despite ongoing labour shortages in a key sector of its economy, Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni said on Sunday.
Between January and the end of September, the Mediterranean nation long beloved by tourists for its sunny islands and rich archaeological sites – welcomed 31.6 million visitors, a four-percent increase compared with the same period in 2024, according to Bank of Greece data published in late November.
“Overall, we expect 2025 to be another record year for tourism in our country,” Kefalogianni said in an interview with the Greek news agency ANA.
The conservative minister also expressed hope for another bumper year in 2026.
“The indicators for 2026 are already particularly encouraging and allow us to be optimistic,” she said.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Greece has been breaking annual records in tourism revenues and the number of foreign visitors.
Across 2024, 40.7 million people visited Greece, up 12.8 percent from 2023.
But the uptick has sparked concern over the unchecked construction in several hotspots, while Athens locals have complained that the proliferation of short-term holiday lets has caused rents to skyrocket.
Climate change-fuelled heatwaves and increasingly devastating wildfires also pose a threat to the sector, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has trumpeted since taking office in 2019 in a bid to revive the economy after the financial crisis.
According to the Institute of the Greek Tourism Confederation (INSETE), tourism directly contributed around 13 percent of GDP in 2024 and indirectly to more than 30 percent of GDP.
Source: AFP
The original article: belongs to NEOS KOSMOS .
