Which Mediterranean countries are fastest approaching the tourism milestones of 2019

Greece and Spain are lagging behind their competitors in the Mediterranean in terms of how quickly in 2021 they are filling the “tourist gap” created by the pandemic compared to 2019.

According to the officially published data so far, Greece is moving better than Spain, but both countries are behind Turkey, Cyprus and Croatia, in terms of replacement rates in 2021 compared to the tourist traffic in 2019. It is pointed out that Turkey, Spain and Cyprus have published statistics for July, while Greece and Croatia until June. But the replacement rates have been calculated for both the seven months (where data are available) and the six months (for all countries)

In particular, regarding Cyprus, tourist arrivals in the period January – July 2021, amounted to 638,292 compared to 320,589 in the corresponding period of 2020, recording an increase of 99.1% and a decrease of 70.7% compared to the period January – July 2019 (2,181,994 arrivals). Based on the above, the replacement rate in the seven months of 2021 compared to the same period of 2019 reaches 30%. However, taking into account the statistics of June, the replacement rate for the semester is 20.9%!

Spain received 9.8 million tourists in the first seven months of this year compared to 13.2 million in the same period last year and 48.1 million visitors in the first seven months of 2019.

The replacement rate of visits in the seven months of January-July 2021 compared to 2019 was only 20.3%, while respectively in the first half of 2021 with the first half of 2019 it barely reaches 14.2%.

Turkey seems to be going faster as it recorded 10,088,603 international arrivals in the seven months of January-July this year compared to 5,440,406 in the same period last year and 24,693,886 in the seven months of 2019. The replacement rate of 2021 compared to 2019 is almost 40%, while at the semester level the percentage is 31%.

Croatia also received 1.5 million tourists in the first six months of 2021, an increase of 50.6% compared to the same period in 2020 and compared to 5.57 million tourists in the first half of 2019. The replacement rate is at About 27%.

In Greece, the incoming travel traffic in June 2021, according to the Bank of Greece, amounted to 1,069 thousand travelers, increased by 317.1% compared to June 2020, while in the six months January-June the incoming travel traffic decreased by 20 , 4% and amounted to 1,733 thousand travelers, compared to 2,178 thousand travelers in the corresponding period of 2020 and 9,407.0 thousand in the first half of 2019. The replacement rate reached 18.41%.

Based on the half-year data of all Mediterranean countries under consideration, the replacement rate for Spain is 14.2% for Greece 18.41% for Cyprus 20.9%, Croatia 27% and Turkey 31%.