Tourists Keep Pouring Into Greece...

Greece’s record-breaking tourist season got a big bump in June when the first hordes of visitors started coming in droves in and the trend is continuing, officials said.

According to preliminary aggregated data for July released today by the K, air arrivals from abroad in the seven airports of Greece increased 11.7% reaching 1.65 million compared to approximately 1.47 million the same month of 2012.

The arrivals in July at Chania airport on Crete jumped `14.4% reaching 171,537, Heraklion by 13.9% reaching 522,397; Zakynthos by 12.8% reaching 118,397; Kos by 11. 5% reaching 205,421; Kefalonia by 11.2% reaching 45,284; Rhodes by 9.2% reaching 378,380 and Corfu by about 8% reaching 220,786.

In some cases, such as in Rhodes, air arrivals of the last month were at higher levels than even the arrivals of July of 2011 which was a very good year for the Greek tourism.

A significant part of the increase in total arrivals from abroad comes from the Russian market. This development is expected to particularly affect positively the tourism revenues, boosting revenues of the national economy, as the average cost of Russian tourists is much higher than the average per capita expenditure of the visitors to our country.

For example, the arrivals of Russian tourists in Zakynthos in July increased by 147.9% compared with the same month in 2012, by 57.5% in Rhodes and in Kos by 49%. The rapid growth of foreign tourism this season will be more clear when added to the statistics the increased road arrivals from the Balkan markets and arrivals by all means by Turkey.