Tourists stay less but spend more

A caller study has identified shorter visitor stays, widening determination disparities and fatigue successful traditional markets arsenic cardinal challenges facing Greek tourism.

At the aforesaid time, the request for spatial and further temporal enlargement of activity, together with the strategic repositioning of mature destinations towards high-spending markets, specify the caller priorities of the sector.

According to a caller study by the Institute of the Greek Tourism Confederation (INSETE) connected inbound tourism successful 2025, the wide representation remains complex, arsenic historically precocious performances successful arrivals and receipts are accompanied by structural changes successful depletion patterns.

Positive developments see the steady betterment successful regular spending, which acts arsenic an denotation of the strengthening of the tourism product’s value, arsenic well arsenic the definitive consolidation of Athens arsenic a metropolis interruption destination. In addition, the mitigation of seasonality, the effectual dispersion of root markets and the dynamic improvement of league tourism and cruises connection further resilience to the nationalist tourism ecosystem, notes INSETE.

In 2025, inbound tourism, excluding cruises, recorded 38 cardinal arrivals and receipts of €22.6 billion, up by 5.6% and 9.8% respectively from 2024. Including cruise takings, total gross reached €23.6 billion. 

Despite the visitor increase, total overnight stays stay stagnant astatine 230 cardinal since 2019, attributed to the continuous alteration successful the mean magnitude of stay, which has present fallen to 6.1 nights, from 7.4 earlier Covid. This limits the anticipation of expanding revenues astatine a complaint proportional to arrivals and is owed to planetary trends for shorter trips, the summation successful regular costs owed to inflationary pressures, and the enlargement of the stock of time travelers from neighboring countries. 

Offsetting this trend is the mean spend per night, which accrued to €97, importantly exceeding ostentation successful the 2019-2025 period.

UK, Turkey and the US were the main drivers of gross maturation for 2025, covering astir 45% of the total summation successful receipts. In contrast, the German market, the largest for the country, shows wide signs of fatigue.