Alternate Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura hopes to increase arrivals from the UK by prolonging the country’s holiday season, adding more air capacity on flights from Britain and develop more niche tourism packages. She told the Travel Daily UK that there has already been a 25% increase in arrivals from the British market year on year in an interview at the World Travel Market (WTM) in London. “We are very satisfied with this given Greece has gone through difficult times, but I think we can double the number of British arrivals to Greece over the next two years,” she said.

In figures, the 25% hike in tourists from Britain translates to 1.8 million UK travellers visiting Greece compared to 1.4 million from January to August, 2015, compared to the same period in 2014. Better still, travel receipts from this market jumped by a whopping 33.5%.

Meanwhile, the latest figures show that more good news is yet to come as the latest figures for 2016 already show a 4% increase to kick off the year. “Our four-year tourism development strategy is starting to show results, but the real evidence of its success will come in 2017 to 2018,” said Kountoura. “Tourism is very important to our economy as it is around 18 to 20% of our GDP, and we are focused on investing in new developments, infrastructure and better quality services.