For Greece’s economy, tourism is the main driver, accounting for about 20% of its output and employing one in five workers. How it fares is tremendously important for Greece which emerged from its third international bailout in 2018 after a decade-long debt crisis.
Yannis Retsos, head of the country’s tourism confederation (SETE), explained that tourism revenues in 2020 had reached 4 billion euros, down from 18 billion in 2019, because of the global restrictions in travel to contain the spread of the virus.
Greece is all set to revamp its economy from shrinking by about 10 percent in 2020 and is pinning its hopes in the second half of 2021 for an economic recovery.
“We need to wait for the second half of the year to see some sort of action in tourism,” Retsos told a Greek radio station.
“Anything we see from May on would be a very positive surprise,” he said.
On the basis of the recent official information from the Bank of Greece, tourism arrivals in the January-to-October period dropped 76%.
Greece has 135,931 reported cases of infections since it documented its first case in February and 4,672 deaths. The country has been in a nationwide lockdown since early November and allowed only hair salons and bookstores to reopen for the Christmas season.
Tags: Greece, tourism sector
