Greece sees surge of international arrivals in June

Air traffic in Greece picked up strongly in June after the government eased coronavirus-related travel restrictions in May before the start of the key summer tourist season, civil aviation authority data showed on Thursday.

Air traffic in Greece picked up strongly in June after the government eased coronavirus-related travel restrictions in May before the start of the key summer tourist season, civil aviation authority data showed on Thursday. International arrivals jumped more than 13-fold in June to 1,181,771 from just 87,481 a year earlier, during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the data.

Greece, where about a fifth of economic output comes from tourism, suffered its most severe slump on record in 2020 as the coronavirus drastically curbed international travel, with arrivals down 75% from the previous year. This year, as vaccination campaigns in Greece and many other countries have picked up, the government is expecting a 50% rise from the levels seen in 2019 when the country welcomed a record of more than 30 million tourists.

Overall traffic at Greek airports was still down 2.8% for the first six months of the year, the figures showed.