Βy L. Karageorgou
Less tourism revenue from French tourists to Greece this year apparently accounted for the biggest portion of the 753-million-euro drop “gap” over the Jan-Aug 2016 period, compared to the same period in 2015.
The Bank of Greece’s (BoG) announcement on Monday of a drop in this year’s tourism-related revenues, by 7.1 percent, sent shivers through the sector and the government’s relevant tourism ministry, as tourism professionals and the Greek state’s treasury had eagerly eyed a “banner year” in order to shore up the recession-battered Greek economy.
Specifically, among the five main markets on which the Greek tourism sector relies, the biggest drop came from France, with French holiday-makers calculated as spending 226 million euros less in 2016 than in 2015.
France, along with Germany, the UK, the US and Russia, accounted for 42.2 percent of tourism revenue in Greece, as well as 34.17 percent of all tourist arrivals. Less revenue from tourists from the “big Five”, in fact, accounted for nearly 95 percent of the decrease.
According to the BoG, the decrease in total revenue is due to less spending per visit (by 9 percent), although arrivals as a whole increased by 1.3 percent.
