Greece’s tourism competitiveness goes up

• 22 July, 25

Greece is among the top three destinations across Europe’s biggest markets for this year.

Greece is gradually winning the challenge on tourism competitiveness, at least in terms of reputation. This is evident from the clear improvement in how it ranks in the preferences of the top European markets from which it draws visitors.

Greece comes third, having risen by two places, in the preferences of the Germans and the French and fifth in the United Kingdom. These three countries complete the top three of the largest European inbound tourism markets for Greece, which is also in third place for the Italians and a little lower, in sixth, for the Spanish.

These findings appear in a study on Greece’s top tourism markets carried out by the Institute of the Greek Tourism Confederation (INSETE). The survey was conducted for INSETE by GlobalWebIndex (GWI) online, with 5,507 respondents aged 16-64 in January-February 2025 in the above five key markets asked to reveal their holiday plans in the next 12 months. These five countries contributed almost 47% of the receipts of inbound tourism in 2024, coming to around 10 billion euros.

Greece’s rise by two places in the preferences of the Germans and the French, and by one place for the Spanish, is mainly attributed to the decline in the preferences of the Germans for trips to Austria and France, as well as the Spanish for trips to Germany.

In terms of preference rates, Greece increased by 1.8 percentage points in France, remained almost stable in Germany, while there was a decrease of 1.5 percentage points in the UK and 0.5 percentage points in Spain.

On the intention to travel in the next 12 months, more than seven in 10 Germans, Britons, Spaniards and Italians said they intended to take a vacation abroad. The French show a lower desire (around six in 10) but, among those who do plan to travel, a much higher percentage (25.4%) will make five or more trips compared to the other markets where that rate is between 3.9% and 6.3%.

In all five markets, moreover, half the respondents intend to spend the same as last year, and those who mean to spend more is greater than those who intend to spend less.

Cre: ekathimerini