By the year 2021, the tourist numbers to Greece would top 35 million.
And, the tourism revenues would range between 19 and 20 billion euros, that would end up contributing about 6 to 7% of gross domestic product, as per the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) president Andreas Andreadis. He had mentioned this in a stamen to Alexos Tsopras who is the Prime Minister of Greece during a meeting at Maximos Mansion on Monday.
Elena Kountoura, the Tourism Minister and the SETE vice president Yiannis Retsos were also present at the event.
The prime minister declared that nearly 30 million tourists would be arriving in the region this year. He also went on to add that this would further depend on some international events. The officials of SETE also said that the season might witness a record and it would attract as much as 28 million tourists.
The representatives of the tourism industry had stressed on the requirement for the creation of an observatory for analyzing the statistics regarding the tourism takings as well as the statistics.
The data from the Bank of Greece revealed that there was a 905-million-euro decline in 2016 tourism revenues as compared to the year 2015. Moreover, the latest report by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) showed that our of the 30 European nations, Greece had witnessed the fourth worst performance in tourism takings in 2016.
Tsipras expressed that the second bailout review would be wrapped up.
He also said that the imposition of the planned ‘special stayover levy’ would actually be dependent on the level of the primary budget surplus.
Andreadis and Tsipras have both agreed to meet in a dinner in the next few days wherein the heads of the tourism industry’s national associations would participate. Retsos also estimated that tourism would be the protagonist for yet another year. He also added that its taxpaying capacity is not endless.
