Tourism is among the most important pillars of the Greek economy, and every year the country sets new records in the number of foreign tourists received and the revenues achieved from this industry. Another peak is looming in 2026. In the first four months of the year alone, the number of foreign tourists increased by 27.1%, and tourism revenues by 37.7%, reports "Handelsblatt".
Tourism helped Greece quickly recover from the financial crisis in 2010, as well as during the pandemic. In 2023, the number of foreign tourists already surpassed that of 2019.
But this unstoppable success story also has a downside.
Overburdened infrastructure and delayed modernization
The National Bank of Greece noted that roads, ports, electricity grids, water supply and waste management are in many places overloaded to the limit. The islands are particularly suffering from this burden, and statistics show that nearly half of foreign tourists spend their holidays on the Greek islands.
According to data from the National Bank of Greece, the island of Santorini alone is visited by nearly 3.5 million foreign tourists each year, which is 200 times more than its own population, and in Mykonos the figure exceeds 300 times the number of local people.
However, it is precisely in these popular tourist destinations that infrastructure investments have lagged significantly over the past 20 years, the bank notes, citing the series of earthquakes in the spring of 2025 on Santorini, which showed how vulnerable the island is to disasters. It has also suffered from water and electricity shortages for years.
The consequences for nature are severe
The bank assesses the consequences of tourism on the climate as particularly critical, writes the German "Tagesspiegel". Greece is among the regions with rising temperatures and a growing risk of extreme droughts, forest fires and other natural disasters. Experts agree that the country suffers from overtourism - especially due to the fact that there is a huge concentration of tourists at the same time on a small number of islands. The natural disasters that have hit the southern country in recent years have cost billions.
As a result of the huge influx of tourists, rents in many places on the Greek islands are rising sharply, as are housing prices, and this is pushing local owners of small shops and restaurants out of the most popular resorts, which in turn leads to a loss of identity. New problems are also emerging with the overloaded infrastructure in energy and waste management.
Qualitative, not quantitative improvement
That is why the Central Bank of Greece is pleading for a fundamental change of course - instead of chasing new records in the number of arriving tourists, the tourist season should be extended, visitors should be more evenly distributed across the Greek regions and alternative tourism should be strengthened.
If this does not happen, according to experts, there is a risk that the country will lose precisely those advantages that distinguish it from other similar destinations - namely: authenticity, hospitality and local identity.
"We are trying to offer luxury tourism without investing in the people who have to make it happen," commented former Minister of Tourism Angela Gerekou. She adds that due to overtourism, staff are sometimes working to exhaustion with low wages in an insecure environment and with no lack of prospects.
Greece should set itself the goal not of quantitative increases, but of achieving a better quality product in tourism, distinguished by durability and social commitment to workers and locals, summarizes "Tagesspiegel".
Bistra Uzunova editor