Internationals who hold a valid EU COVID Certificate planning to travel to Greece will no longer be required to follow the testing process upon their arrival.
Such a decision has been confirmed by the Hellenic Republic’s government in an effort to make the travel process easier for travellers and help the country’s tourism sector recover from the damages caused by the Coronavirus, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.
Despite the current epidemiological situation, authorities in Greece have eased their travel measures for arrivals from other countries.
In this regard, the Tourism Minister of Greece, Vassilis Kikilias, has stressed that Greece “is preparing this year to welcome the visitors of the summer season earlier than any other time from March 1.”
“Greek tourism has shown remarkable resilience in the past two years, sending a strong message of security to travellers in our country, and it will do the same this year,” the Minister pointed out in this regard.
Recently the Tourism Minister also stressed that the country’s tourism sector aims to reach pre-pandemic levels during this year.
Kikilias highlighted the importance of the tourism industry as an essential contributor to the Greece economic sector and its contribution to the survival of the “average Greek family during times of crisis”.
Under the current rules, air passengers are obliged to present a negative result of the antigen test, not older than 24 hours, or a PCR test result not older than 72 hours, in order to enter Greece. Such rules are applied to all passengers, including children above the age of five.
Last year, the figures published by the European Travel and Tourism Council (ETC) showed that as a result of the devastating situation caused by the spread of the Coronavirus and its new strains, a total of 77 per cent decrease was recorded in tourism across the European Union Member States.
However, despite such a decrease that many EU countries faced, Greece managed to maintain the tourism situation under control,
In addition, the tourism ministry aims to achieve its goal through the 320,000,000 euros from EU recovery funding that are projected to be allocated in many projects, including health and wellness tourism and agritourism.
Previously, SchengenVisaInfo.com reported that the Hellenic Republic’s Tourism sector saw a significant increase in the number of international travellers during the first 11 months of last year.
In addition, the data revealed that the number of international tourists surpassed levels of the same period in 2020 by 96.8 per cent, welcoming 14.3 million passengers compared to 7.3 million in 2020.