More than two million tourists arrived at Santorini by plane in the first eight months of this year alone.
This comes as the tiny Greek island on the Aegean Sea struggles to cope with the surging number of tourists. In 2023, around 3.4 million tourists visited the islands, arriving by ferry, cruise ship and plane. This year is expected to surpass that number.
According to the Greek Civil Aviation Service, the popular Cyclades airports all saw overwhelming arrival numbers between January and August this year.
Santorini registered 2,053,692 passengers, beating its popular neighbour Mykonos, which recorded 1,238,856 arrivals. Paros came second with 258,900, Naxos third with 88,930, and Milos fourth with 85,629 passengers.
The data for August, the most popular month for holidaymakers, saw more than half a million arrivals to the Santorini airport. Santorini recorded 513,759, a jump from 499,728 the same month last year. Meanwhile, 394,529 flocked to Mykonos by plane.
Data from 2022 found that a million airport arrivals to Santorini came from within Greece. However, the UK was runner-up, with 422,668 arrivals travelling from British airports.
Tourists come to the gorgeous island destination for its iconic white-washed houses with blue domes, and the backdrops of volcanic cliffs and sandy white beaches.
The tiny 35-square-mile island has a population of just 15,500 people, with locals demanding action against the wave of tourism, which has hit the cost of living and the quality of life for many residents.
The mayor of Santorini, Nikos Zorzos, has led the charge against the number of visitors.
He has called for a cap on the number of cruise ship visitors to 8,000 a day – down from the current figure of around 17,000 people.
The mayor has also been pushing authorities for years not to allow a single extra bed on the island.
This week, he told the i paper that Santorini “faces all the problems of a big city, even though we are not designed to be a big city or to deal with these problems”.
Last month, he warned that the surge in construction to accommodate the number of tourists was destroying the island.
He told The Guardian: “We live in a place of barely 25,000 souls and we don’t need any more hotels or any more rented rooms. If you destroy the landscape, one as rich as ours, you destroy the very reason people come here in the first place.”
Santorini has an estimated 80,000 hotel beds, more per square metre than any other Greek destination apart from Kos and Rhodes.
However, Mr Zorzos faces an uphill battle. By 2028 Greece hopes to attract almost 40 million tourists nationwide – 5.5 million more than this year and nearly four times its total population.