2.7 million passengers arrived at the island’s airport alone
The Deputy Mayor of Tourism and Culture, Georgios Toppos, expressed his deep satisfaction for the tourist miracle that took place this year in Rhodian tourism, with almost 3.5 million visitors having come to the island by September 2024, by airplanes, cruise ships and catamarans. .
As he underlined “Rhodes, known throughout the world as a high-quality tourist destination, with comparative advantages, the historical, cultural and natural heritage and the warm hospitality of its people that make its tourist product unique, attracts the interest not only of thousands of visitors but and journalists from all over the world”. “This year’s tourism year for our emerald island is breaking all records!” emphasizes Mr. Toppos, as “according to the official data from the “Diagoras” airport of Rhodes and also from the Port Authority of Rhodes, it is proven that this year is the best in the history of Rhodesian tourism, presenting an overall increase in the arrivals of visitors to the island until September, of the order of 12-14% compared to 2023, which was also a very important year for Rhodes tourism.
Passenger traffic at Rhodes airport literally took off in the first nine months of 2024, after 2.7 million passengers arrived on the island by air. The scepters are held again this year by the British visitors, followed by visitors from Germany, Poland, Italy, Sweden, Israel, other Scandinavian countries and then from Belgium, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria.
We also had a notable increase in passenger arrivals in Rhodes by cruise ships. Based on the data, 264 cruise ships with 353,475 passengers approached the port of Rhodes by the end of September, while in October we expect another 60.24 cruise ships in November and 4 in December 2024″.
The numbers for visitors from Turkey are also impressive, since the tourist traffic from there, this year, shows an increase of around 30% and so far 370,026 Turkish visitors have come in 2024, while for the month of September 4,259 visas were issued.
The most impressive thing about the cruise, however, according to Mr. Toppos, is that “October will break every record compared to all previous months, since scheduled cruise ship calls are 60, more than any other month. In particular for yachting, there is an increase in boat arrivals of the order of 25%, which is huge in terms of alternative marine tourism” and concludes:
“To this excellent result that I mentioned above”, as Mr. Toppos points out, “all the agencies involved in tourism and, of course, the Municipality of Rhodes contributed the most with the tourism policy and strategy that it followed from the beginning of the year, with its presence in international tourism exhibitions, press trips, in collaboration with the Tourism Directorate and PROTOUR.
A policy which he continues with actions and actions aimed at the further promotion, especially digital, of the island, with some changes in terms of strengthening alternative tourism, experiential tourism and, of course, new markets, so that we have an extension of the tourist season and winter tourism months, in collaboration with tourism agents abroad”.
“As a municipal authority, we are studying and planning actions and actions to extend the tourist season and the winter months and a series of plans that we are working on that relate to the promotion of the island and to new tourist markets, several of them prefer vacations during the winter” he said.
The Municipality of Rhodes proposes, in collaboration with all the competent local bodies, the planning and implementation of a program with the aim of expanding the tourist season, highlighting individual characteristics of the island such as ecotourism, wine tourism, sports tourism, culinary, conference, spa, religious tourism tourism and others) as well as attracting new markets from Asia, namely China, India, Bahrain and South Korea.
