Fraport Reports Record August: Winners and Losers Across Greece’s Airports

Thessaloniki airdrome showed an summation successful traffic. Credit: Fraport Greece

Fraport Greece’s 14 determination airports had a palmy August, confirming the period arsenic the highest for Greek tourism. The airports saw a 4% summation successful rider postulation compared to past year, with implicit 6.78 cardinal travelers passing done successful a azygous month.

However, a person look astatine the information reveals important differences betwixt destinations, signaling a displacement successful Greece’s tourism landscape.

The Fraport airdrome winners: Kavala, Thessaloniki, and the Ionian Islands

While astir airports showed growth, immoderate stood retired with exceptional performance. The airdrome of Kavala astir doubled its home postulation with an awesome +94.1%, starring to an 11.2% wide increase. Thessaloniki, a large gateway for Northern Greece, besides saw beardown maturation with +9%, welcoming implicit 910,000 passengers.

Other beardown performers included:

Chania: +6.7%

Corfu: +5.3%

Skiathos: +9.6%

Mytilene: +7.6%

This maturation successful determination hubs and less-trafficked islands suggests that tourists are progressively exploring caller areas beyond the accepted hotspots.

The losers: Mykonos and Santorini

In stark contrast, the highly fashionable islands of Mykonos and Santorini experienced a downturn.

Santorini saw the largest decline, with a -9.4% driblet successful full passengers for August. Mykonos besides struggled, with a 7% diminution successful home postulation and a near-stagnant wide effect of conscionable +0.2%. These figures reenforce a inclination of over-tourism fatigue astatine these destinations, wherever precocious prices and overcrowding whitethorn beryllium pushing visitors to question different options.

The inclination is adjacent much pronounced erstwhile looking astatine the full January-August period. While wide postulation for the 14 airports accrued by 2.6% to 26.3 cardinal passengers, Santorini’s year-to-date postulation plummeted by a spectacular 16%, losing implicit 329,000 passengers. Mykonos besides showed losses, with a marginal driblet of -0.9%.

A clearer representation from Fraport’s airdrome clusters successful Greece

The information becomes adjacent clearer erstwhile analyzed by Fraport‘s 2 airdrome clusters:

• Cluster A (Thessaloniki, Crete, and the Ionian Islands) showed robust maturation of +5.5%. This radical includes destinations with greater capableness for maturation and little overtourism pressure.
• Cluster B (the Cyclades and Dodecanese) recorded a alteration of 1%, mostly owed to the struggles of Mykonos and Santorini.

This divergence highlights a cardinal situation for Greek tourism: managing the aggravated unit connected “mature” destinations portion capitalizing connected the rising request for emerging areas.

The information confirms that portion the play is affirmative overall, the maturation is uneven, signaling a request for strategical adjustments to negociate overtourism and beforehand caller destinations.