The Financial Performance of Greek Hotels Before and During the Crisis

Abstract

This paper aims at determining the critical factors affecting the profitability of the tourism sector in Greece, by using data for an extensive panel of Greek tourism enterprises for 2005-2011 period. As the Greek economy is still in a deep and prolonged recession, exploring profitability issues in specific sectors could help identify those sectors which could act as drivers of growth for the Greek economy out of the recession. The tourism sector, which accounts for almost 25% of GDP in Greece (directly and indirectly), is an obvious candidate for contributing to this end. The econometric results suggest that the recent crisis has resulted to a differentiation of the determinants of profitability of Greek tourism firms.