The Bank of Greece recently published its final, official figures on Greece’s tourist performance for 2018, bringing to light some interesting figures regarding the short-term rental sector, mainly the popular Airbnb platform.
According to these final numbers, a jaw-dropping total of 1.8 million foreign nationals stayed in an Airbnb property during their visit to Greece.
The total number of people who stayed in an Airbnb-listed property in Greece at some point in 2018 reached 2.157 million — meaning that approximately 357,000 Greek nationals used the platform as well last year.
The figures reveal that Airbnb represented 5.5 percent of total tourist accommodations in the nation of Greece last year.
Airbnb’s figures now put the company next to Europe’s largest tourist agencies, such as TUI and Thomas Cook, which each bring between two and three million people to Greece every year.
Mauro Turcatti, the chief of public relations for Airbnb in Greece and Italy, noted that Airbnb recorded an increase of 20 percent in its numbers of accommodations in Greece in 2018, and the trend for 2019 seems to be yet another double-digit hike.
Approximately 91,200 houses, apartments and rooms are listed on the Airbnb platform in Greece, with Americans being by far the most interested in using its services.
Fourteen percent of the total number of foreign nationals who used Airbnb in Greece in 2018 were US citizens, eleven percent were French and eight percent were British.
Eighty-six percent of the total available properties are entire houses or apartments, with only fourteen percent being rooms inside inhabited properties.
This was the first time that Greek authorities and Airbnb have published such detailed figures about the platform’s presence in the country.
These figures, of course, do not include the thousands of travelers who use other platforms similar to Airbnb, such as Expedia or Booking.com, meaning that a large part of today’s tourism industry in Greece depends on this kind of accommodation.
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