Travel and tourism will play a leading role in 2024, as revealed by major travel platforms Booking.com and Expedia.com, according to data presented at the ShortStay Conference 2024, held on February 9 & 10 at the Conference Center of Ancient Eleonas, with the participation of owners and managers of short-term rental accommodations, villas, and serviced apartments.

According to data regarding short-term rentals, Athens, Crete, Rhodes, and Corfu continue to attract the interest of travelers booking through the platforms this year.

Meanwhile, the trend of reduced bookings for Mykonos and Santorini continues into 2024. Airbnb accommodations on these two islands saw a decrease in their occupancy rates last year by 4.5% for Mykonos and 6% for Santorini, but their prices followed an opposite trend, increasing by +11% for Mykonos and +10% for Santorini.

Based on the data presented at the ShortStay 2024 conference by Tassos Efthimiou, the area manager for Greece and Cyprus at Booking.com, classic European markets such as the British, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Scandinavians, among others, continue to show interest in Greece.

On the other hand, for Vrbo, the platform for short-term rentals by Expedia, which has a larger presence in the American market, the United States is the number one country booking reservations for Greece, followed by the UK, Germany, France, and Canada, as stated by Ciaran Lawlor and Sinead Lim of Expedia.

More than 130,000 active property listings are currently on Airbnb in Greece, a 19% increase compared to January 2023, according to data presented by Maria Flores Portillo, EMEA managing director of Beyond, a company providing dynamic pricing solutions for short-term rental accommodations.

Regarding 2024, based on current bookings compared to the picture presented by bookings in February 2023, Beyond records a 16% increase in revenue per available accommodation unit, a metric that combines accommodation price with occupancy.

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Eurostat: In January, inflation reached 3.2% in Greece – In the Eurozone it was 2.8%

New markets

Beyond the established tourist markets, ShortStay 2024 analyzed opportunities for approaching new markets, such as digital nomads and travelers with disabilities.

Dimitris Tselios and the Nomad365 team presented certification for accommodations suitable for digital nomads, while Dimitris Kontopidis of Greece no Limits explained modifications that can be made to accommodations to be suitable for people with disabilities.

New taxation and legislation

The conference also addressed the issue of taxation following changes made to the relevant law.

Deputy Minister of Finance Haris Theocharis, in a recorded greeting, mentioned that short-term rentals constitute a source of income for thousands of owners, outlined the key points of the new regulation, and emphasized that “the government’s next steps include measures to further simplify transactions for receiving benefits, rent payment, which are the most common actions in our daily lives, but are either burdened by bureaucracy or open ‘windows’ to tax evasion,” characterizing it as an antisocial act.