Abstract:

The cruise industry is considered among the most rapidly growing alternative tourism sector worldwide, exhibiting rising demand trends over the last decades. In Greece, the origins of cruising go back to 1930s, at a time when the first Greek cruise firms introduced cruising routes in the Aegean Sea and the greater area of the Mediterranean basin. At present, the Greek cruise tourism can be considered as a significant participant in the broader East Mediterranean market. The objective of this paper is to examine whether there is a correlation, and in what extent, between the cruise passengers’ arrivals, the international airports’ arrivals and the GDP per capita for six Greek regions. For this purpose, data are collected from a range of official sources, including national accounts derived from the Hellenic Statistical Authority and the Bank of Greece, the Hellenic Ports Association and the Civil Aviation Authority and they are referred to the 2010-2016 period. Studying the statistical relationship between the three variables, we found mixed results among the examined Greek regions for the defined time intervals. Our empirical findings contribute to the existing literature by providing useful conclusions for the cruise industry’s impact on the Greek regions’ GDP growth.

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