Tourism: Great interest for trips to Athens from the USA
Top visitor market in Athena remain Americans, according to online search data for the Greek capital developed by Tourix, Google’s marketing consulting arm. Despite the pandemic, interest in traveling to Athens remains lively.
In 2021, the ranking of the ten countries from the most came the most searches on the Google platform for the US in Athens in descending order, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Israel, Canada, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
Examining the interest of the above 10 countries, based on searches related to accommodation in Athens, in the medium term and in particular from 2019 to 2021, it appears that the USA and the United Kingdom remained firmly at the top of the ranking, while France and Germany show to be the next most important markets, strengthening their position in 2020 and 2021, says a relevant point of Google / Tourix.
The next countries that show serious interest in Athens are Italy and Cyprus, while Australia and Spain, which seemed to be strong markets in 2019, 2020 and 2021, are out of the top ten. Switzerland and the Netherlands have taken their place.
Compared to 2020, in 2021 all the above countries showed an overall increased interest with more intense than the USA 59%, Israel 42% and Cyprus 32%. The only exceptions are searches from the United Kingdom, which fell by 9%, and from Canada, which fell by 3%.
At the beginning of 2021, while restrictions on international travel due to the pandemic had returned, there was a decline in interest, with most searches coming steadily from the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and France. With the lifting of quarantine measures and the beginning of the summer season, searches showed a large increase with more intense than the US and France. At that time, the USA remained at the top of the search, while France surpassed the United Kingdom, which also showed a small increase.
It is recalled that according to data from the Bank of Greece, in the period January-August 2021, which includes the strongest seasonal months for Greek tourism, travel receipts from the US increased by 371.5% compared to the corresponding period of 2020 and In terms of incoming traffic from the US in the same period increased by 127.2% to 211,000.
Besides, after the study “Greek tourism 2030”, prepared by the Deloitte – Remaco consortium, SETE proposes to the Greek government to further support the promotion of Greece as a tourist destination in the strong and large markets of North America such as the USA, but also Canada.