Tourism in Greece is growing again providing tens of thousands of new jobs in the country. This was reported by the conservative Athenian newspaper Kathimerini, citing the tourism organization Sete.
This year over 250,000 new jobs have been created in the country severely affected by the financial crisis. Out of them, 210,000 (82.8%) jobs were from the field of tourism. Moreover, tourism in Greece estimates that this year there will be an increase by 6% in arrivals compared to 2015, when 26 million tourists travelled to Greece.
From January to August 2016, 753,000 more tourists arrived to the country compared to the same period last year. Tourism businesses and other service providers now produce up to a quarter of the gross domestic product of Greece.
The winners of the boom are mainly Crete (+10.7%), the Cyclades islands like Mykonos or Naxos (+11%) and the islands in the Ionian Sea (+10.6%), for example Corfu.
In contrast, because of the refugee crisis, the number of tourists on the islands in the eastern part of the Aegean Sea dropped significantly. The most important islands like Kos and Samos registered a decline of 15% and 26% respectively. On Lesbos the situation is even more dramatic. This year there is so far 60% less tourists than in 2015.
