More than a million tourists expected to arrive in Greece in first week of Aug.

More than one million holiday-makers are expected to arrive in Greece in the first week of August, the peak month for tourism in the east Mediterranean country, according to provisional data supplied by the Bank of Greece (BoG) for travel remittances for May 2022.

If the forecast pans out for the first week of August and the rest of the holiday season, then a near full recovery from the past two years of pandemic-battered seasons will be confirmed, with arrivals and revenue per tourist nearing the record-breaking levels of 2019.

According to the BoG, travel remittances between Jan-May 2022 increased by a whopping 536.4 percent compared with the same period in 2021. In absolute terms, revenues in May reached 1.41 billion euros, up from 222 million in the corresponding month of 2021. Between Jan-May 2021, revenues reached 2.5 billion euros, on the back of a 552.9-percent increase in arrivals during the same period.

The figures, however, were still short of 2019 levels, as May 2022 recorded travel remittances as down by 9.7 percent from the same month in 2019; and down by 12.2 percent in the Jan-May 2002 period from the same five months in 2019.