Visitor Numbers for Archaeological Sites in Greece: 2020

© David Gill, 2021

The Hellenistic Statistical Service released the visitor numbers for archaeological sites in Greece today (31 March 2021). They cover the period up to the end of September and show a fall of 79.8 per cent due to the pandemic: a fall from 11.2 million visitors in 2019 to 2.2 million visitors in 2020. Olympia saw the largest fall with just over 85 per cent. Overall this represents a fall of some 9 million visitors for the period to the end of September. It also represents a drop of 84.2 per cent of income through ticket sales: from just over 90 million Euros in 2019, to 14.2 million Euros in 2020.

Museum Visitors and Greece: 2020

© 2021

The Hellenic Statistical Service released the latest visitor numbers for museums in Greece today (31 March 2021). Although the numbers are only available up to the end of September 2020, they show a drop of 79.5% due to the pandemic. The Archaeological Museum in Herakleion showed a drop of over 90 per cent. The January-September comparison between 2019 and 2020 shows the impact: a fall from 4.7 million visitors to 976,805. (In 2019 there were 5.8 million visitors to museums in Greece.) This is reflected in a decrease of ticket sales of 82 per cent: from 19.2 million Euros in 2019 to 3.4 million Euros in 2020.

Greece: Museum visitors

National Archaeological Museum, Athens © David Gill

In 2019 there were 5.89 million visits to museums in Greece, worth over 23 million Euros in receipts. The two museums with the highest number of visitors are the New Akropolis Museum (with 1.7 million visitors in 2019) and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens (with 608,000 visitors in 2019). These two museums account for 40 per cent of all public museum visits in the country. Museums in Attiki account for 2.7 million visits, 47 per cent of all public museums visits in the country.

Other areas with high museums visits include Thessaloniki with 591,000 visits (10 per cent of visits), the Dodecanese (including Rhodes) with 381,000 visits (6 per cent of visits), and Crete with 845,000 visits (14 per cent of visits); the site museums of Delphi had 275,000 visits, and Olympia 159,000 visits (together 7 per cent of visits).

© David Gill. Data: Hellenic Statistical Service.

Cultural Heritage on the Increase in Greece

© David Gill

The latest figures from the Hellenic Statistical Service demonstrate that archaeological sites and museums are seeing an increase in visitor numbers (and a related increase in revenue).

Further details can be found here.