ATHENS – Greece is continuing to see tourists flocking into the country during the autumn and had enough accommodations to handle them, ranked 8^th in Europe for the most beds in hotels and other facilities.

That was for 2021 before this year’s run began during the waning COVID-19 pandemic, said a report released by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical authority, according to GTP Headlines.

In 2021 the European Union had an estimated total of 28.1 million bed places available across 597,000 tourist establishments with Italy and France accounting for over a third of the total available capacity, Eurostat said.

Greece alone in 2022 could see 30 million tourists spread out during what looks to be a four-season attraction and also behind Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Croatia, and Austria, ahead of Sweden, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

In a statement, Greece’s Short-Term Accommodation Managers Association (STAMA) noted that short-term rentals played “a major role,” with platforms such as Airbnb also being filled after shutting down during COVID lockdowns.

Compared with 2020, the number of bed places and accommodation facilities have remained stable but compared to pre-pandemic 2019, the number of tourist beds in 2021 was still down by 2 percent (28.8 million) and the number of establishments by 3 percent, the news site said of the sector.