Tourism numbers for Greece for the first quarter of 2014 offer some cause for optimism for the battered hellenic economy. According to data published by Greek tabloid Efimerida Friday, nearly 1.19 million tourists chose to visit Greece between January and March, an 18.2% increase on the same period last year.
In total, 598,000 people from within the EU visited Greece, an increase of 18.2%, although the number of French and German tourists fell by 39% and 1.2%, respectively. Meanwhile, tourists from outside the EU increased by 13% to 589,000.
Tourist arrivals from countries of the eurozone grew by 5.7% and arrivals from EU countries outside the eurozone rose by 31.4%.
Arrivals from Russia showed an increase of 100% amounting to a total of 26,000 visitors, while U.S. visitors were up by 16.2% to 32,000.
Accordingly, tourism revenue for the first quarter was up 21.7% on the same period of last year, boosting the ‘travel balance’ surplus to 73 million euros from 43 million euros in Q1 2013.
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