Greek tourism 2017: + 7% overnight stays by non-residents

Eurostat expects the number of overnight stays in tourist accommodation establishments in Greece in 2017 to surpass 106 million, up by 4.8% compared to 2016.

As preliminary data indicates, 80% of these overnight stays were made by non-residents and grew by 7.1 percent compared to the previous year before.

On the contary, overnight stays in Greece by residents showed a 3.4 percent decrease, compared to 2016.

Eurostat’s estimates for the entire year were obtained by extrapolating the evolution for the first ten or eleven months of the year to the remaining months. Compared with 2016, the total number of nights spent at tourist accommodation in the EU is estimated to have increased by 5.1 % in 2017.

Estimates for all three types of tourist accommodation establishments show rises for 2017; the number of nights spent at hotels, at rented holiday accommodation and at campsites increased by 4.9 %, 4.7 % and 6.9 % respectively.

The increase at EU level reflected national evolutions; in all but one of the 26 Member States where data is available the number of nights spent at tourist accommodation increased in 2017. Latvia, Slovenia and Croatia recorded the highest growth (+12.0 %, +11.3 % and +10.6 % respectively), while Luxembourg registered drops.

In 2017 the EU tourist accommodation sector continued its recovery that started in 2010 following the two years of decline, in 2008 and 2009.

The nights spent by both non-residents and residents grew faster in 2017 (+6.9 % and +3.5 % respectively) than in 2016 (+5.1 % and 3.1 %).

The growth of non-resident nights at EU level was reflected in all EU Member States for which data is available, except Luxembourg (-0.6 %).

Despite the positive growth at EU level for nights spent by residents, six Member States reported drops. This was the case for Luxembourg, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Sweden and Belgium while Malta (+14.1 %) and Latvia (+12.8 %) reported the highest growth rates.