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Anastasia Balezdrova

This year was good for tourism, according to all representatives of employees in Greece's vital industry. These common assessments were also confirmed by a study carried out among 5,383 tourists by the Hotel Chamber of Greece and the companies TNS ICAP and Quantos in August, which is the strongest month for tourism.

According to the head of the Chamber, George Tsakiris, the trends for next year are positive. "On the British market, we have recorded a 10% increase in pre-booking. The data for Russia forecast an increase of at least 15% following this year’s increase in the range of 40-50%. The German market retains its reduced inflow of last year but there are signs of resurgence and renewed interest in the Greek destinations. We expect a significant increase of over 10% in the number of tourists from Scandinavian countries as well. It is significant that the Swedish airline SAS is planning the opening of 25 new routes to island destinations in Greece. Despite the negative forecasts, tourists from France responded to our expectations this year and it is expected that their number will increase by at least 10% next year."

The survey results for 2013 show that a total of 3.9 million tourists visited Greece during the hot summer months and spent 2.5 billion euro. They constitute about 22% of the total number of tourists during the year whereas the revenues are equal to 21.6% of the total amount for the entire year.

The undisputed champions are the islands in the southern Aegean Sea, where the largest number of overnight stays (8,422,062) and the highest revenue (811,644,056 euro) were recorded. The destination ranks second, in terms of the highest number of tourists, after the region of Central Macedonia, where, however, the number of overnight stays was nearly three million less and the revenues reached 290,386,580 euro. "This proves that the number of tourists does not affect the revenue," said the chairman of the Hotel Chamber George Tsakiris.

The highest was the number of tourists from the European Union member states followed by tourists from non-member countries, namely Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. With regard to remote destinations, the interest of tourists from the USA and China was the strongest.

The average amount that tourists spend a day in Greece is 78 euro and the places where the tourists spend the most are the islands in the southern Aegean Sea (96.4 euro), Crete (90 euro), Attica (86.2 euro) and the islands of the northern Aegean (81.6 euro). By comparison, the corresponding amount in the region of Central Macedonia is 50.4 euro.

The detailed data show that spending for entertainment in Athens is very low. "This is a warning bell that something is wrong. We need to detect it if we really want to turn the capital city into a city break destination.

The study presented for the first time data on the tourists who arrive in Greece by car, the largest number of them being from Macedonia, followed by Serbia and Turkey. The revenues from Macedonian tourists in August were nearly 66 million euro, from Serbs - a little over 62 million euro and from Turks 37 million euro.

Bulgaria is seventh in the ranking with 47,938 tourists, 158,027 overnight stays and 6,428,364 euro spent. The Bulgarian citizens who travel by car to Greece to spend their vacation there constitute 87.6% of the total number of Bulgarian tourists in Greece.