Thousands of Global Travelers Pick Greece as World’s Top Destination for 2025

A highly anticipated travel report for 2025, derived from insights gathered from a massive number of global travelers, is out and the verdict is clear: Greece is the world’s second top destination, closely following Italy, which is ranked as the world’s most sought-after destination for travelers.

TrovaTrip, a group travel platform, teamed up with Creators and Community Leaders to survey their audiences—a total of over 286,800 travelers from across the globe, who shed light on emerging behaviors and preferences that will define the travel landscape in the annual 2025 Travel Trends Report.

“Planning a trip on your own can be overwhelming—from selecting the right destination to managing logistics—but TrovaTrip is here to make it easier than ever,” said Nick, TrovaTrip’s CEO.

In TrovaTrip’s report, Greece reaffirms its status as a classic favorite among international travelers, hot on the heels of Italy. Bali ranks third, followed by Costa Rica and Japan.

Moreover, the report reveals some of the emerging trends that are expected to define travel in 2025.

Millennials and Gen Z are the ones driving travel demand, with their strong desire for exploration, community and meaningful experiences. They comprised 84 percent of the respondents. At the same time, night tourism (also known as noctourism), a travel style that focuses on night-time activities with travelers selecting destinations perfect for these, is on the rise, offering unique travel activities after dark. Local cuisine remains a top travel motivator while the median budget is $2,000.

Greece sets new revenue record as a global tourist destination

Greece set a new record in tourism revenues for 2024, collecting 21.7 billion euros ($22.6 billion), up from 20.6 billion euros ($21.5 billion) in 2023, according to data released by The Bank of Greece on February 20.

The increase by 5.3 percent or 1.1 billion euros ($1.15 billion) compared to last year has been long expected by both Greek government officials and tourism businesses, given the steady rise in tourist arrivals throughout 2024.

After a two-year pause during the pandemic when international travel was affected and tourism came to a standstill, Greece has been seeing a steady increase both in the number of tourist arrivals and tourism revenues.

In 2019, the last year before global travel was interrupted by COVID, Greece recorded revenues of 18.2 billion euros ($19.17 billion) from 31.3 million tourist arrivals. Numbers dropped dramatically in 2020 and 2021 and started to pick up again in 2022, when Greece welcomed 27.84 million international tourists, a 227 percent increase compared to 2020 but still 18 percent less than 2019 (pre-pandemic).

In 2023, Greece made a phenomenal comeback as an international tourism destination, and has continued to do so since. The number of tourists that visited the Mediterranean country of 10.3 million in 2023 (33 million) marked a 120 percent increase between 2019 and 2023.

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