During the last summer, it suffered from all kinds of natural disasters: heatwaves, fires, floods. The extreme weather events discouraged many tourists who intended to visit the country, thus hurting the Greek tourism industry.

However, as it appears, “Greece is on its way to a new tourism record”, writes the financial magazine Handelsblatt. “And if it weren’t for climate change, the numbers could be even better.”

According to a report by the National Bank of Greece (NGE), “August holidaymakers were 4% less than in 2019 – a consequence of negative headlines about the previous month’s heatwaves and wildfires, as the survey authors write.” The research concludes that “the heat and natural disasters prevented half a million travelers this year, reducing at the same time revenues by 300 million euros”.

However, the 2019 record may yet be broken. “This is due to changing traveller’s behaviour: more and more holidaymakers prefer cooler months at the beginning of the year or autumn. This season this phenomenon is even more typical: in October the number of arrivals at the main Greek airports rose by 23%, while the first 20 days of November also saw an increase of 11%.

[…] This is an extension of the season from the beginning of April until the end of November, which will not only have a positive impact on the labor market, but also on dealing with hypertourism”.