Greek Tourism Minister Olga Kefaloyani said on Sunday that tourism in Greece is expected to register “another record year” in 2025 despite the shortage of labor in this key sector of the economy, Agence France-Presse reported, BTA reported.
"Overall, we expect 2025 to be another record year for tourism in our country," the minister said in an interview with the Greek agency ANA-MPA.
From January to the end of September, Greece, valued especially for its Aegean islands and archaeological sites, welcomed 31.6 million visitors, which is 4 percent more than in the same period in 2024, according to data from the Bank of Greece published in late November.
For the whole of 2024, 40.7 million people visited Greece, which is 12.8 percent more than in 2023.
After the Covid-19 pandemic, Greece is breaking annual records in terms of tourism revenue and the number of foreign visitors, AFP notes. However, many concerns are being raised about the alleged rampant development of construction on certain islands, especially the world-famous Santorini.
Heatwaves and devastating fires also pose a threat to this sector, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has been promoting since he came to power in 2019, with the aim of reviving the economy after the financial crisis.
According to the Institute of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (INSETE), tourism contributed directly to approximately 13 percent of GDP in 2024 and indirectly to over 30 percent of GDP.
Olga Kefaloyani is "optimistic" and for the coming year.
"The signals for 2026 are already particularly encouraging and allow us to be optimistic", she said.
However, Kefaloyani points out that the sector has been facing a labor shortage since the beginning of the pandemic, "a serious challenge observed in many European countries", she said.
The growth of short-term rentals in central Athens has contributed to the rise in real estate prices in the Greek capital, which has drawn criticism from residents who are increasingly finding it difficult to find housing.
The prime minister promised this week to stop the "uncontrolled growth of short-term rentals in city centers" by extending a ban on new short-term rentals in the main neighborhoods of central Athens, which has already been in force since this year.