A confident start: Hellas welcomes guests

The tourist season this year started in Greece confidently and successfully. Hellas rejoices in the increase in demand, and is doing everything possible to meet it.

European airports and airlines that have reduced staff during the pandemic are making every effort to meet the situation with tourists. It should be honestly admitted that this does not always work out, as evidenced by airport queues, delays in baggage checks and collection. Greece against the backdrop of this chaos looks quite attractive. Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias says:

Indeed, many airports in well-organized European countries have several serious problems. They face problems due to disruption of the schedule, lack of staff and long delays. I have to say that so far the airport of Athens, as well as all the regional Greek airports and of course the airports of all the islands, have not encountered any problems.

expected, writes GreekReporter, that this summer more than 500,000 tourists will arrive from the USA on direct flights to Greece. Hellas is also loved by travelers from France, who rank first in terms of numbers in the monthly report published by L’Echo Touristique on the entertainment platform Orchestra. But this year Greece will lose Russian tourists and the Chinese – the latter will not come due to the restrictions of the new wave of COVID-19. But Greece seems ready for it, Mr Kikilias says:

“Unfortunately, in recent years the number of Russian tourists in Greece has already been very small. So we don’t face a huge problem. In 2020, we had 50,000 travelers, and in 2021, 120,000 tourists from Russia. And this year, hardly 0.5% of the expected number of Russian tourists will come.”

The Greek Ministry of Tourism does not want to limit the tourist season only to the summer months and is trying to extend it: in autumn, the weather is good almost throughout the country, so tourists can be received until November. The head of the department recalls that the tourism sector is a key source of income for the Greek economy: every fourth euro is earned from tourism.

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