Greece Looking for Extended Winter Tourism

Greece is aiming to extend the tourism season from October to November and into the remainder of the winter months, under specific conditions, to attract Northern European tourists to Greece. The country is preparing for one of the finest tourism seasons in history. Visitors have already surpassed pre-pandemic levels and are expected to exceed 33 million in the next winter months. The government intends to improve this by extending the tourism season.

The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, announced the endeavor last week at the Thessaloniki International Trade Fair.

“To extend the tourism season into the winter we will approve additional support,” Mitsotakis said, adding that funds will be allocated so that Greece can be promoted by the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) through joint advertising with airlines and tour operators until March 2023.

The PM emphasized the extremely busy summer tourist season, saying that the government is planning to offer additional incentives to extend the tourist season through domestic tourism and that the program “Tourism for All,” which provides subsidized vacations to all Greek nationals, would be expanded to include another 200,000 new beneficiaries.

Vassilis Kikilias, Greece’s tourism minister, was in Germany and Austria this week, and he wants to visit Sweden and France next week to promote winter vacations in Greece, he stated that the goal is to sustain all existing scheduled flights from Northern and Central Europe to Greece, which have already grown in comparison to the same period in 2019.

The plan involves funding for a broad co-promotion scheme for winter travel to Greece, and it is being created in collaboration with Athens International Airport and Fraport-Greece, two companies that are adding their incentive packages for airlines to the effort.