The balance of travel services showed a surplus of 14 million euros in January, compared with a surplus of 13 million in January 2017, the Bank of Greece said on Monday.
In a monthly report, the central bank said that based on provisional data, travel receipts in January 2018 fell by 3.0 pct to 153 million euros from 158 million in January 2017, while travel payments also dropped, by 3.6 pct. The drop in travel receipts reflected a 16.3 pct decline in average expenditure per trip, as inbound traveller flows increased by 16.0 pct. Net receipts from travel services offset 0.7 pct of the goods deficit and accounted for 4.7 pct of total net receipts from services.
In January 2018, travel receipts declined by 3.0 pct year-on-year. In more detail, receipts from residents of the EU28 increased slightly, by 0.3 pct, to 86 million euros, whereas receipts from outside the EU28 fell by 7.0 pct to 66 million. Breaking down receipts by visitor?s country of origin, receipts from Germany fell by 9.2 pct to 19 million, whereas receipts from France increased by 5.9 pct to 3 million. Receipts from the United Kingdom decreased by 1.8 pct to 11 million. Turning to non-EU28 countries, receipts from Russia dropped by 93.7 pct to 0.4 million euros, while receipts from the United States also decreased by 22.1 pct to 11 million In January 2018, the number of inbound visitors rose by 16.0 pct year-on-year to 604 thousand. Specifically, the number of visitors from Germany rose by 21.7 pct to 62 thousand, as did the number of visitors from France, by 22.1 pct to 8,000. Visitors from the United Kingdom decreased by 4.2 pct to 35,000. Turning to non-EU28 countries, the number of visitors from Russia dropped by 84.8 pct to 2,000, whereas the number of visitors from the United States rose by 9.4 pct to 22,000.
