Speaking at the release of the operator’s Q1 results, group chief executive Peter Fankhauser said the destination was once again in the operator’s top spot with 2.5 million customers across Europe predicted to visit in 2017.
He said this would return the destination to the same levels of popularity last seen in 2014, before a combination of refugees escaping war in Syria and financial issues which led to petrol and cash shortages dominated the headlines.
Fankhauser said: “Greece overall is up and every island is up. I would like to say Rhodes is up because of Thomas Cook but that is probably a bit too much.
“What we see in Greece is an overall increase of over 40% throughout the islands (and) the performance is more or less the same out of all serious markets.”
He added this, combined with the operator’s good quality product in the destination, meant it was Cook’s most popular again having dropped to the fifth slot for the last two years.
“There are two more flights going to Greece out of the UK,” he said. “We have expanded our offering to Greece in anticipation that Greece is going to be strong.”
Fankhauser also refused to condemn Spanish hoteliers who have increased prices by between 6% and 8% for summer 2017 thanks to the country’s renewed popularity due to its perceived safety.
“I would say they are reasonable increases given the market situation we have,” he added. “There was very strong demand last year so it is natural they are increasing the prices.”
However, he added while the operator can largely shrug off price increases of between 1% and 3%, anything more than 5% does impact the market.
In the long-haul market Fankhauser also said a levelling off of demand for the US was most likely caused by the strong dollar and the fact that there are less all-inclusive properties available as opposed to Donald Trump’s recent ascendance to president.
He added: “We put the FCO guidance on our website over what is happening in the US but we don’t see any noticeable impact from that.
“We don’t express any political opinions but naturally we don’t like anything that impacts our customers’ ability to visit.”
