ATHENS – Tourism is leading Greece’s accelerating recovery during the waning COVID-19 pandemic – it’s the country’s biggest revenue engine – but the comeback is being aided by transport and trade too.
Those three sectors have gone up 20.3 percent in a year, said Alpha Bank’s economic bulletin which showed that in the first half of 2022 that the output showed strongly in hotels as well, said GTP Headlines.
Alpha Bank analysts said the contribution of those sectors was expected to continue in the third quarter, which ended Sept. 30, after the Bank of Greece said the economy is on a curve to rise at least 5 percent.
The bank also said that travel receipts jumped 154 percent from January to July over the same period in 2021 when international travel was more limited and health measures were in place. Incoming arrivals were up 191 percent.
The hospitality and food and beverage industries accounted for a 32 percent increase in employment to further spur a rebound, after they fell 21.6 percent in the same period in 2021, the site report also noted.
Overall, employment in the first half of 2022 went up by 8.9 percent, or 335,000 people, even if they weren’t in higher-paying jobs, although the New Democracy government hiked the minimum wage to 713 euros ($698.88) monthly.
The data also showed a remarkable turnaround in tourism which was performing at levels even above the previous record year of 2019 before the Coronavirus nearly shut that down, up 15 percent over that performance.
Accommodation and food services were up 112 percent in the first seven months over 2021 – when they had risen 81 percent compared to the lockdown year of 2020 when COVID first struck.
