Greece as a holiday destination is slowly but surely starting to emerge on the social media platform that’s now taking cyberspace by storm, which is none other than TikTok, although the top 10 site accounts in the country are mostly surprises.
For instance, the TikTok account of the less visited but equally picturesque harbor town of Aghios Nikolaos, in eastern Crete, has more than 20,000 followers on the platform and 25 published videos.
Also prominent on this social media platform are the northern metropolis of Thessaloniki, the Ionian Island of Cephalonia, the remote Dodecanese Island of Karpathos and the northern inland city of Drama, an eyebrow-raising result. All of the latter have between 1,000 and 2,700 followers on their TikTok accounts.
For Cephalonia, specifically, a promotional video on the platform has surpassed 1.8 million views.
Other Greek holiday destinations with increasingly popular TikTok accounts are the serene southwest Aegean island of Kythira, the northern Peloponnese resort town of Xylokastro, the historic and picturesque coastal town of Parga, in northwest Greece, the municipality of Katerini in north-central Greece, and the very popular port city of Hania on Crete.
Katerini, for instance, is near a handful of popular beach resorts in the northwest Aegean and mountain destinations, such as Mt. Olympus, yet the small city itself is a far cry from a preferred holiday destination. However, its account is one of the most active for destinations in Greece, having posted nearly 100 videos.
Data on TikTok accounts managed by municipalities and other local government entities in Greece was collected and analyzed by the Tourix firm’s tourism marketing and research arm.
According to Bank of Greece (BoG) figures, travel revenues in the first 10 months of the year posted a record of 19.6 billion euros, exceeding the previous record of 18.2 billion euros. The latter was reached during the Jan-Oct period in pre-pandemic 2019.
The number of visitors to Greece reached nearly 31 million over the same period of 2023.
