Greek Holidays & Easter for Hotels
When do the Greek public holidays fall this year, on which day of the week — and which night last year should each one be compared with? Not the same date, and not “364 days back”: the same holiday last year. For hotels in Greece. Free, no sign-up.
Two rules for comparing with last year
A comparison with last year only means something if you compare like with like. That's why there isn't one rule but two — and which one applies depends on the day:
exactly 52 weeks: a Saturday is compared with a Saturday, not with the same date
holiday with holiday — even if last year it fell on a different weekday
The first rule is right for the flow of bookings. On holidays it misses: Christmas minus 364 sends you to 26 December, Easter to an ordinary Sunday weeks away from the holiday. Your “last-year reference” becomes a normal night, and the comparison tells you nothing (how to read a comparison with last year).
Why Greek Easter moves every year
Orthodox Easter is calculated on the Julian calendar and carried over to ours with a 13-day difference — which is why it falls anywhere from early April to early May. Four more holidays move with it:
- Clean Monday (Kathara Deftera): 48 days before Easter — the end of Carnival and the start of Lent.
- Good Friday: 2 days before.
- Easter Monday: the day after.
- Whit Monday (Agiou Pnevmatos, also called Holy Spirit Monday): 50 days after — a long weekend for the public sector, banks and schools, traditionally the first summer getaway for many Greeks. It is not a statutory holiday for private-sector employees.
What a foreign owner should know
- A holiday that falls on a weekend is not moved. In Greece it simply disappears into the weekend — no extra day off. Moves have happened only by special decision (May Day 2024).
- Assumption Day (Dekapentavgoustos, 15 August) is the peak of the domestic summer season — and many villages hold their panigiri (local festival) around this date.
- Greek Easter is not your foreign guests' Easter. Their school and public holidays follow Western Easter, which is usually on a different date — sometimes weeks apart. This tool, like WisDom RM, works with the Greek holidays only.
What this tool doesn't show
- Long weekends and bridges: it shows the weekday, not whether it creates a long weekend. Read it with the article's map — and remember that a holiday falling on a weekend is not moved to a weekday.
- Local holidays: the town's panigiri, a local anniversary, or an Easter that is traditionally a three-day holiday in your area. Only you know these — and you declare them yourself.
- Moves by decision: when May Day falls in Holy Week, it has been moved in the past. The tool warns you, but it doesn't know what will be decided.
- How well the holiday performed: for that you need your own numbers — measure with RevPAR, against the right night last year.
Never want to look it up again?
In WisDom RM the comparison with last year happens in every Night Analysis with exactly these two rules: if the night is a holiday or a local event you've declared, it's compared with the same holiday last year; otherwise with the same weekday, 52 weeks back. And next to the number it says which night it's comparing with — so you don't have to trust it blindly. In every plan.