Greek islands on list of 20 best in Europe

Three Cycladic islands appear this year among the 20 best in Europe, according to the readers of travel magazine Conde Nast Traveler.

Mykonos, Santorini and Paros are ranked in the top ten, while Crete, Corfu, Rhodes and Kos received distinctions.

Specifically, after Ibiza, Spain, which won first place, Crete was distinguished as the second best island of Europe in the 2022 Readers’ Choice Awards of the American edition of the magazine.

It is followed by Sardinia, Italy in third place and then Mykonos is in fourth place. The fifth place is occupied by Sicily, while Santorini ranked sixth. The top ten was rounded out by Paros (9th) and Corfu (10th), while Rhodes is eleventh. Finally, Kos is in the 16th place of the twenty.

This year’s Conde Nast Traveler Readers’ Choice Awards also include readers’ top islands in the Caribbean and Atlantic Ocean, Central and South America, Australia and the South Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Indian Ocean, North America and in the United Kingdom.

The communication company MTC GROUP publishes the results which, as it states in its announcement, once again distinguish Paros by ranking it among the most popular destinations while, at the level of the Cyclades, it remains firmly in third place as evidenced by the revenue and arrivals data that recently published by the consulting company.

Paros is “top of the pops”.

The South Aegean Tourism Initiative recently announced that September air arrivals at the region’s main airports saw an average increase of 14%. At the same time, the statistics of the State Airport of Paros recorded an increase for the same month by 40%!

In particular, data from the Paros airport show that 19,738 people arrived on the island by plane during this September through 368 domestic and international flights, while in the corresponding month of 2019, 14,192 visitors had arrived by air on the island.

And by measuring the corresponding performances of the previous months, we find that, especially for Paros, 2019 has long since ceased to be a year of comparison in terms of arrivals as well as revenue, which is now the most important indicator of a destination’s success. Also noteworthy is the fact that both in 2019 and 2018, the island recorded a 30-year record in arrivals.

In June, more than 120,000 arrivals were recorded, marking an increase compared to the same month in 2019 which also exceeded 40%, which means that this June was the best in terms of arrivals in Paros to date. Suffice it to mention that in the nine months of January – September 2018, arrivals at the Airport reached 83,500, increased by 25% compared to the corresponding period of 2017 and by 163% compared to 2016, while at the level of annual growth, in the six years from 2014 to 2019 visitor arrivals to the island doubled. Even now, in October, the tourist season is holding up well since the number of cruise ship arrivals is undiminished.