ELSTAT
Greece's national statistics office; its final 2025 tourism data quantifies overtourism concentrated in three regions.
ELSTAT's final 2025 tourism figures, published on 27 July, put 49.3% of Greek overnight stays on Crete and in the South Aegean, outside the short-let freezes the government said on 5 September it would extend in Athens and Thessaloniki.
Last refreshed: 3 October 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
Do Greece's short-let curbs even touch the regions taking half its tourists?
Timeline for ELSTAT
Mentioned in: Greece plans to keep Athens lets frozen
Nomads & CommunitiesPublished final 2025 accommodation arrivals and overnight-stay figures
Nomads & Communities: Greece's freezes miss half its nightsBackground
ELSTAT, the Hellenic Statistical Authority, is Greece's national statistics office and the publisher of the country's official tourism data. Its final 2025 figures, released on 27 July 2026, are the primary measure of how tourist activity spreads across Greece's 13 administrative regions.
ELSTAT measures and leaves policy to ministers, which makes its numbers common ground in the short-let debate: the Ministry of Tourism cites rising totals as a sign of a healthy sector, while critics of the current restrictions use the same regional breakdown to argue that the curbs sit in the wrong places.
Any future move to extend short-let limits beyond Athens and Thessaloniki will be judged against the regional shares ELSTAT has published, which gives the authority a lasting role in a debate it does not take sides in.
ELSTAT maps where tourist nights fall
ELSTAT published Greece's final 2025 tourism figures on 27 July 2026: 38.2 million arrivals, up 2.8%, and 156.3 million overnight stays, up 2.2%. International visitors made up 73.8% of arrivals and 83.8% of overnight stays, with Germany leading EU-origin arrivals and the UK leading non-EU European ones.
Ministers and critics now lean hardest on ELSTAT's regional table. Crete and the South Aegean together accounted for 49.3% of nights, while Athens and Thessaloniki, the only places with short-let curbs, host roughly a quarter of arrivals. When the government announced on 5 September that it would keep the freezes in both cities to the end of 2027, ELSTAT's breakdown was the yardstick for how much of The National tourist load those freezes leave untouched.
How many tourists visited Greece in 2025?
Where do most tourists in Greece go?
When is peak tourist season in Greece?
Where do most of Greece's foreign tourists come from?
Why don't Greece's short-let bans cover most tourists?
Written with AI from Lowdown's published reporting. Not individually reviewed by an editor. Updated 3 October 2026. Editorial standards.