ATHENS – With COVID-19 already a nightmare of the past largely forgotten – although it’s still infecting, hospitalizing and killing people – tourists have returned to Greece in such numbers it’s almost back to what it was before the pandemic hit in 2020.

That was revealed in the 2023 Economic Impact Research of the World Tourism Travel Council (WTTC) which indicated that it could be a year busting the records set in 2019 for arrivals and revenue.

https://www.travelandtourworld.com/news/article/greece-travel-to-revive-fully-this-year-says-expert/

The report said that tourism in 2023 could bring Greece 39.2 billion euros ($42.79 billion,) the sector being the country’s biggest revenue engine that brings in as much as 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Also, the WTTC is predicting that tourism in 2023 will make around 17,000 jobs, reaching the peak level of 2019 of around 820,000 employed by tourism although at one point it had been close to a million, now facing some shortages.

Tourism has recovered 82 percent of the jobs lost during the COVID pandemic but lost thousands of people to higher-paying or more permanent positions who didn’t want to come back.