The INSETE Institute (Institute of the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises) conducted a study aimed at identifying the profile of holidaymakers who chose Greece in 2016-2018. Tourists from FYROM (Republic of Macedonia), Cypriots and Albanians were excluded from the total sample. INSETE was interested in the method of booking, availability of higher education, age, income level, and other characteristics.

Research results

Statistics

According to the results, it became clear that in 2018, tourists who would spend at least one day in Greece, increased by 9.8%. 

Citizenship

Most often, Europeans came to rest: in 2018, there were 20,500,000 tourists from the EU. Only 2,600,000 people flew from non-European countries to Greece.

Most people came from the Netherlands: an increase of 24.1% compared with the previous year. Germany and the United States of America showed excellent results: tourists increased by 17.8% and 12%, respectively.

In total, 46.1% of tourists from the total number of tourists came from Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, the United States of America and the Netherlands to Greece. In 2018, there were 0.5% fewer people from the Russian Federation than in previous years.

The reasons

The main reasons for visiting Greece were: conferences, congresses, leisure, business, many came to see their relatives and friends.

Age

On the basis of age, it was determined that Greece is the most attractive for people aged 25-54. In 2017, this group accounted for 64.8% of all holidaymakers, and in 2018 – 64.6%.

Method of booking

The most popular option is the Internet. They were used by more than 73% of tourists in 2017. A year later, they became more – already 79%. The rest of the tourists decided to resort to the services of travel agencies.

Education

Studies have shown that most tourists graduated from universities. In 2018, the number of people with higher education increased by 1,140,000 compared with the previous year.