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GreekReporter.comGreek NewsEconomyFewer Brits, More Austrians Visit Greece

Fewer Brits, More Austrians Visit Greece

Women walk outside of the ancient Herodes Atticus theatre as the Parthenon temple is seen in the background in AthensGreece can count on continuing hordes of Austrian tourists who keep coming despite Greece’s crushing economic crisis, but the numbers of British visitors dipped last year, a trend that could keep on.

The director of the great Austrian travel agency Ruefa, Walter Kral, estimated a 40 percent boost in bookings for holidays in Greece, the newspaper Kleine Zeitung said, while the director of the Austrian branch of Thomas Cook Predicted John Afoukatoudis predicted that this year “will be a Greek summer”.

The President of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, Andreas Andreadis, told Reuters that he expected a big return of Europeans who “thirst for sun” and that Greece could get 17 million tourists this year after a disappointing 2012 in which they stayed away in the face of protests, strikes and riots against ongoing austerity measures.

Kleine Zeitung’s report says that, in response to the crisis, Greek hoteliers have reduced the prices, raising the quality of the services, while an additional reason for the increased demand is the offers on flights from Vienna and Graz, which directly connects nine summer destinations with ten Greek islands. Apart from Crete, Rhodes, Kos or Corfu, many smaller Greek islands are in great demand this year.

More than 500,000 Austrians visit Greece annualy, while Austria -in proportion to its population of 8.4 million residents – is on the peak of the foreign tourist arrivals.

But the news isn’t as good with British visitors. According to UK’s Office for National Statistics, in 2012, the number of British tourists to Greece dropped by 5.7 percent to 1.8 million following an increase in 2011.

This decline of visits from UK to Greece, can be interpreted by the Britons’ fears of Europe falling into a long term economic decline. The latest 2012 data from Office of National Statistics of British revealed that the British spent during their vacations in Greece 1.3 billion euros ($1.69 billion) in 2012.

Brits from 45-64 were the most common age group to visit Greece, followed by those aged from 35-44. According to the ONS data, British chose to stay in Greece for an average of 11 nights. Greek visits to UK also declined last year by 30 percent to 159,000.

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