ATHENS – Greece is on a path to see more than 30 million tourists in 2023 with the COVID-19 pandemic all but forgotten but restaurants, hotels and other tourist businesses said they can’t find enough workers to serve them.

There’s a shortage of at least 60,000 workers just in hotels, said a study by INSETE, the Greek Tourism Confederation’s (SETE) research body, highlighting the problem, said GTP Headlines.

https://news.gtp.gr/2023/06/28/study-70000-jobs-still-open-as-greek-tourism-season-starts/

That also showed that with an 89 percent increase in tourist inflows in 2022 to 27.8 million compared to 2021, tourism enterprises are still short of staff with many workers finding other positions in the wake of the pandemic.

World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) President & CEO Julia Simpson said that came as the tourism sector was set to create more than 17,000 jobs this year, reaching the 2019 peak of 820,000 employed by the sector.

Among the findings was that more than 10 percent of employees in Greece are occupied in Food & Beverage and hospitality in the summer months or 376,000 employees in 2022, accounting for 9.1 percent of all jobs.

During the summer peak season (June-August), accommodation facilities and F&B businesses account for 10.6 percent of total employment compared to 8.1 percent in 2013, 10.4 percent in 2017 and 10.8 percent in the 2019 record.