Between January and the end of September, the Mediterranean nation, loved by tourists for its sunny islands and rich archaeological sites, welcomed 31.6 million visitors, a four-percent increase compared to the same period in 2024, according to Bank of Greece data published in late November.
“Overall, we expect 2025 to be another record year for tourism in our country,” Kefalogianni said in an interview with the Greek news agency ANA.
The conservative minister also expressed hope for another bumper year in 2026.
“The indicators for 2026 are already particularly encouraging and allow us to be optimistic,” she said.
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Since the Covid-19 pandemic, Greece has been breaking annual records in tourism revenues and the number of foreign visitors.
Across 2024, 40.7 million people visited Greece, up 12.8 percent from 2023.
But the uptick has sparked concern over the unchecked construction in several hotspots, while Athens locals have complained that the proliferation of short-term holiday lets has caused rents to skyrocket.
Climate change-fuelled heatwaves and increasingly devastating wildfires also pose a threat to the sector, which Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has trumpeted since taking office in 2019 in a bid to revive the economy after the financial crisis.
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According to the Institute of the Greek Tourism Confederation (INSETE), tourism directly contributed around 13 percent of GDP in 2024 and indirectly to more than 30% of GDP.
Meanwhile, farmers have been protesting in Greece and vowed to maintain road blockades for a second straight week, even as the prime minister on December 21 reiterated that the government was open to talks.
Greek farmers are outraged over long delays in subsidy payments triggered by a scandal involving embezzled European Union agriculture aid, and are also under pressure from low prices, rising energy costs and worsening climate conditions.
“Occupying roads and other public infrastructure that belongs to everyone… are actions which harm the country” as well as “local economies in the regions”, conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement on Facebook.
Following a meeting on Saturday afternoon, farmers’ unions rejected the prime minister’s invitation to hold talks on Monday, after protesters last week temporarily blocked the central port of Volos.
The port is a key gateway into Thessaly, Greece’s agricultural heartland, which is struggling to recover from the widespread destruction of livestock and infrastructure wrought by Storm Daniel in 2023.
