euros (+13.6%), while the number of French
tourists rose by 4% to more than 1.5 million euros,
generating revenues of more than 1.2 billion euros,
which is a new record for this specific country of
origin. In contrast, arrivals from Russia were sub-
stantially reduced to only 513 thousand, despite
the reversal detected in December 2015. There
were also remarkable inflows of tourists from other
countries and regions (e.g. Italy, Turkey, Central
Europe, Balkan countries, Chine), whose presence
was intensely felt in certain places.
The tourist year 2015 closed with almost 26 million
arrivals, and revenues of approximately 14.2 billion
euros, whereas in the previous year arrivals
(including cruises) stood at 24 million (13.3 billion
euros) and in 2013 slightly exceeded 20 million
(12.1 billion euros).
Moreover, a study prepared in mid-2015 by the
Institute of the Association of Greek Tourist
Enterprises (SETE) estimated that, excluding
cruise-visitor spending, outgoing tourist spending
stood at only 13.2% of incoming tourist revenues.
The same study also shows that tourism is one of
the key sectors of the national economy, heavily
affecting all its sectors, while there is a strong cor-
relation with the agricultural sector, especially in
high-end hotels.
After all, tourism remains an unrivalled global eco-
Trade with Greece
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