The Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) on Tuesday reiterated its confidence that the 19 million tourists target set for 2014 will be met, despite problems in the Russian and Ukrainian markets. According to SETE’s data on international arrivals in the January-July period, all major airports in the country posted double-digit increases in July; the highest rates were recorded in Athens (+31%), Chania (+22.9%), Mykonos (+39.9%), Santorini (+26.7%) and Kalamata (+62.5%). Athens is still on a recovery trend with a higher than 25% increase in July and 31% rise in the seven-month period and is apparently set to overcome the 2014 target of 750,000 additional arrivals. The number of foreign visitors in the country was up by 17% in January-May this year, exceeding 3.5 million, while tourism revenues jumped 10.6% compared to the same period in 2013, the Bank of Greece (BoG) announced a few weeks ago. Tourist arrivals from the EU 28 reached 2.069 million, up by 18.7% compared to the same period last year. Arrivals from third countries increased by 14.7% to 1.497 million, while arrivals from Eurozone countries increased 12.6% and arrivals from other EU countries increased 28.2%. Tourist arrivals from Germany dropped by 5.8%, while arrivals from France and the UK increased by 13.9% and 25.5% respectively. Arrivals from Russia increased by 39% at 146,000 and arrivals from the United States increased by 33.4% at 124,000. Tourism revenues from EU member states increased by 14.5% at 1.1 billion euros, while revenues from countries other than the EU 28 rose to 738 million euros, recording an increase of 5.1% compared to the same period in 2013. The Greek travel balance recorded a surplus of 1.13 billion euros, an increase of 6.7%, compared to the same period last year.
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