Greece's travel sector sees 6 billion euro surplus in first half of 2025

(Reuters) -The Greek travel services sector saw a surplus of 6 billion euros ($7 billion) in the first half of 2025, a 9.1% increase from the previous year, the data from the Bank of Greece showed on Thursday.

In January to June, travel receipts rose 11% from the same period last year to 7.6 billion euros, driven by a 24% increase in travel payments and a 10.1% rise in average expenditure per overnight stay.

Tourism accounts for more than a quarter of economic output, making the expenditure by visitors closely followed data.

In that period, receipts from residents of the 27-country European Union grew by 8.5% to 4.1 billion euros, and receipts from other countries grew 13.7% to 3.2 billion euros, with receipts from euro zone members Germany, France and Italy being the leading contributors to the growth.

Receipts from non-EU member Britain also grew by 7.3% to 1.2 billion euros and receipts from the United States were up 29.4% to 704.3 million euros.

In the first half of 2025, the number of inbound travellers to Greece rose 0.6% to 11.7 million, remaining at the roughly the same number as in 2024.

While the travel traffic through airports grew 4.9%, the traffic across road border-crossing points decreased by 13.1%, the Bank of Greece said.

($1 = 0.8588 euros)

(Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Alison Williams)