The data presented by tourism agents at an event in Thessaloniki
For the next tourist season, pre-bookings have already increased by 18% in the British market, in Germany they remain at this year’s levels, while there is great interest from the Balkan countries and the cruise ships that will dock at the port of Thessaloniki, from 63 will increase to 76, pointed out the president of the Panhellenic Association of Hoteliers, Grigoris Tassios, speaking at an event, entitled “The Possibilities of Strengthening Tourist Flows in Northern Greece” organized by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Thessaloniki, in collaboration with the Office of Economic & Commercial Affairs (EIF) of Northern Greece Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The figures clearly show that road tourism is very important for Northern Greece, underlined Mr Tasios and clarified that road tourists are the source of most of the income. According to the statistics of the Institute of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (INSETE Intelligence), as he said, in Northern Greece we had 8,988,546 road arrivals for 2023 until September at all border stations. In 2022 we had 6,626,247 and 10,254,240 in 2019. Most tourists are from the Balkans, namely Romanians, Turks, Serbs, Skopians, Bulgarians and Albanians. At the two airports of Thessaloniki and Kavala for 2023 we received approximately 2 million tourists until September, almost the same number of tourists who visited our country throughout 2019.
The general advisor of IEA, Second Head of the Office of IEA Northern Greece, Alexandros Alexiadis, and emphasized that, “we already have a large increase in the arrival of cruise ships for 2024, as of the 63 cruise ships that docked at the port of Thessaloniki in 2023, they are expected to dock in the next tourist season 76 cruise ships. Greece is one of the strongest brand names internationally. The numbers are very good and Greece is in the top ten places internationally.”
“We had a very good course this year in tourism which disproved the Kassandras”, emphasized the 1st Vice President of EBET Manolis Vlachogiannis and added that, “we have important products at a very good level and the benefits of tourism spread to many sectors of the country and this is positive . The high concentration of tourism in a narrow space should not degrade the services provided and lead to an excessive increase in the price of land.”
In this particular event, among other things, the ways of strengthening and enriching the tourist product offered by Northern Greece and more specifically Halkidiki and Thessaloniki were examined, such as the improvement of border stations, access and the provision of high-level services, in order to attract more and better tourists, more months of the year.
