The National Bank of Greece is warning that Greek tourism’s reliance on flights has become one of the sector’s clearest vulnerabilities, even as demand remains positive after several record years.
In its latest Business Trends: Tourism report, NBG said the Middle East crisis had not derailed Greek tourism, but had exposed air connectivity as the sector’s “Achilles’ heel.” The bank’s central point was not that the 2026 season is collapsing. It was that Greece’s tourism model depends heavily on a transport link the country does not fully control.
NBG framed the spring 2026 escalation involving Iran and the Strait of Hormuz as both a geopolitical and energy shock. Oil prices peaked in April at $120 per barrel, aviation fuel prices doubled, and the escalation raised fears of fuel shortages and wider strain on air transport. Those fears did not fully materialize, the bank said, partly because the price spike was short-lived and airlines were able to absorb some of the cost through fuel hedging.
The data gave the warning its nuance. NBG’s annual survey of Greek hotel small and medium-sized enterprises, conducted in April and May during that period, still pointed to expected sales growth of about 3% in 2026, compared with 4.5% in 2025. Scheduled flights at Greek airports for the May-to-August period were also running 3.6% higher, ahead of the roughly 1.6% increase seen across Europe.
Hotel operators still felt the strain. Inflation in key European markets reduced disposable income, while Greek hotel businesses were more exposed to the crisis than SMEs overall. Among hotel SMEs, 80% reported cost pressure, while nearly half reported effects on demand and investment planning.
Greek tourism is operating at enormous scale. Final Bank of Greece data show that travel receipts reached €23.63 billion in 2025, up 9.4% from 2024. Inbound traveler flows rose 6.4% to 43.31 million, while traveler flows through airports increased 5.6%.
That scale makes the air-travel risk more serious. Eurostat data on intra-EU tourism flows show that air transport accounted for 85% of inbound trips to Greece from other EU countries, one of the highest shares in Europe. Greece’s geography explains part of that figure. The islands are central to the country’s tourism appeal, and many of its most important visitor markets are too far away for road or rail to serve as realistic substitutes.
NBG also pointed to Greece’s dependence on European source markets, which account for about 90% of inbound overnight stays from abroad. Europe’s weight helped the sector during the spring escalation, since travelers from the region continued to favor Mediterranean summer trips. The same concentration becomes a weakness when those markets face higher fuel costs, weaker household spending, airspace disruption, or airline schedule changes.
Long-haul markets add another layer. The United States has become an important market for Greece, with Bank of Greece data showing 1.55 million travelers from the U.S. in 2025 and €1.74 billion in travel receipts. NBG says many hotels are taking more active steps to attract long-haul demand, but those efforts still depend on reliable air links and fares that travelers are willing to absorb.
NBG’s scenarios show how quickly a longer period of stress could move through the sector. The April peak was not the baseline. The bank treated it as a warning sign, then tested what could happen in the next tourism period if oil prices stayed above their 2025 level. In a lower-pressure case, with oil near $80 per barrel in the first half of 2027, compared with $70 per barrel in 2025, higher prices could shave about 2 percentage points from expected growth in tourism demand. In a prolonged disruption scenario, with average prices near $100 per barrel, the impact on demand could reach 5.5 percentage points.
NBG argues that Greece needs a standing crisis plan for air connectivity, rather than an improvised response each time fuel prices, routes, or schedules come under stress. In practical terms, that means deciding in advance when the state should act if oil prices remain elevated, airlines cut capacity on key routes, or fuel-supply concerns begin affecting schedules. Aviation risk, in other words, belongs inside tourism policy, not outside it.
For Greece, the issue is not whether tourism can continue growing. The 2025 numbers show that it can. The harder question is how much of that growth rests on a narrow set of routes, markets, and seasonal patterns. NBG’s warning places air connectivity at the center of that debate, alongside infrastructure, spatial planning, labor, and the long-running effort to make Greek tourism less dependent on a single summer peak.
A country of islands cannot build a tourism economy without airplanes. But it can decide how prepared it wants to be when fuel prices, geopolitics, airport capacity, or airline economics turn against the season.