Patrick Comerford
The viewing and reading figures for this blog continue to surprise me. These figures have passed the million mark four times this month, reaching the 34 million mark shortly before mid-day yesterday (29 April 2026), having reached the 33 million mark last Saturday (25 April 2026), 32 million at the beginning of last week (19 April 2026) and 31 million earlier this month (8 April 2026).
This blog had already passed the million figure in readership numbers five times last month, reaching the 30 million mark by 29 March, 29 million four days earlier (25 March), 28 million on 20 March, 27 million on 12 March, and 26 million at the beginning of that month (1 March). The number of hits yesterday was 509,644, the highest figure for one single day, and follows the recrods set on two days last month: 323,156 on 27 March 2026 and 318,307 on 1 March.
I have seen a phenomenal amount of traffic on this blog so far this year, and it continues to reach a volume of readers that I could never have expected when I first started blogging 16 years ago. Half the total hits (17 million) have been within little more than seven months, since 30 September 2025. The total hits last month were the highest monthly total ever (4,523,648), and the figures this month areclose to equalling that, with more than 4.3 million hits coming to the end of April 2026.
At the end of last year, this blog had 21 million hits (31 December 2025). So far this year, there have been more than 13.6 million hits or visitors in 2026.
I first began blogging in 2010, and it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. Throughout this year and last, the daily figures continue to be overwhelming on many occasions. Of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog, three were this month (26, 29 and 30 April 2026), four were last month, three were in February, and two were in January 2025:
• 509,644 (29 April 2026)
• 323,156 (27 March 2026)
• 322,038 (26 April 2026)
• 318,307 (1 March 2026)
• 314,018 (28 February 2026)
• 301,449 (2 March 2026)
• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 280,802 (26 February 2026)
• 276,746 (by 6 pm 30 April 2024)
• 273,022 (27 February 2026)
• 270,983 (25 March 2026)
The number of readers continues to be overpowering and the daily averages have been about 143,000 or more hits a day this month. Ten years ago, in 2016, the daily average was around 1,000.
To put today’s figure of 34 million in context:
Last year alone, 34 million passengers passed through Athens International Airport, an all-time high and a 33% rise compared with the pre-COVID figures. Of that huge traffic, more than 8.7 million direct arrivals by foreign tourists were recorded in Athens.
But these figures mean Athens is facing a crisis in overtourism. With the number of annual visitors pushing out residents, the mayor has been prompted to seek hotel freezes and short-term rental limits. ‘We cannot become Barcelona’, the Mayor of Athens, Dr Haris Doukas, said last weekend. He believes the historic heart of the Greek capital is now at risk of ‘tourism suffocation’.
‘Athens cannot operate as if it were a giant hotel,’ the Mayor of Athens told Helena Smith of The Guardian. ‘Restrictions and rules are needed. Cities must also have a say in the way they develop.’ He warns of the reality on the ground: with 700,000 residents facing nearly 8 million tourists, tourism development becomes unrestrained and simply pushes local residents out of their neighbourhoods.
Haris Doukas is stepping up his campaign and plans to use a bill on tourism-related land use to introduce a sweeping ban on new business activity in the historic centre and to set a cap on hotel beds.
‘We’ll be stopping all tourist investment in Plaka, which I am on a mission to save. There’s no more room. Not for short-term rental, not for serviced apartments, not for hotels, or any other tourism use. The area is oversaturated. We want to say ‘enough is enough’ in a bill that is enshrined in law.’
In neighbourhoods with views of the Acropolis, the number of overnight stays has doubled since 2018 and rental prices have soared for local residents. Even the head of Greece’s hoteliers’ association, Evgenios Vassilikos, has joined calls to impose quotas on building new hotels.
City officials and the tourism sector in Athens are repeating the same mantra: ‘Athens cannot become Barcelona.’ Barcelona hosted the 1992 Olympic Games; Athens hosted the Olympics in 2004, and is now watching as Barcelona’s residents struggle with the same problems. Doukas has drawn considerable encouragement from the Mayor of Barcelona Mayor, Jaume Collboni, who recently announced a drastic move of his own: a complete ban on short-term rentals starting in November 2028 and revoking licences for more than 10,000 tourist apartments.
Haris Doukas was a professor of energy and climate policy at the National Technical University of Athens, with an impressive track record of academic publications, before entering politics. He became the Mayor of Athens in 2024 after unexpectedly winning victory with the support of the main opposition Pasok party and the Athens Now party on a pledge ‘to green’ what is widely seen as Europe’s ‘hottest capital’.
His environmental agenda goes beyond restrictions on the holiday rental model. So far, he has planted 3,855 trees in the historic centre and has introduced sweeping measures such as demolishing buildings to create public spaces, parks and playgrounds. At the same time, all of Athens is currently being dug up to upgrades the city’s electricity, water and drainage systems, which are not suited to the large number of visitors.
The mayor’s campaign extends to the bars and restaurants popping up on city rooftops and offering views of the Acropolis, some operating without licenses and creating noise nuisances. At the same time, he wants to block building companies and property developers from building high-rises along the first line facing the Acropolis to protect the city’s historic skyline.
‘Athens is for its people,’ he says. ‘It is not only for those who simply want to exploit it.’
34 million square metres is 34,000 sq km, the approximate land area of Macedonia in Northern Greece, the largest and second most-populous geographic region in Greece, with a population of almost 2. 4 million people. The major urban centres include Thessaloniki, Katerini and Kavala, and Macedonia also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, under the shared jurisdiction of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.
Mozambique has a population of over 34 million, and 34 million people aged 16+ are in employment in the UK.
34 million minutes is about 64 years, 7 months, and 22 days. In other words, if this blog was getting only one hit a minute, it would take more than 64½ years, from xxx 1962, to reach today’s latest figure of 34 million.
I retired from active parish ministry more than four years ago, on 30 March 2022. These days, though, about 120-140 people on average are reading my daily prayer diary posted on this blog each morning. A similar number have been reading my current series of postings on churches and local history in Staffordshire, and were reading my recent series of postings on the churches and chapels of Walsingham. I imagine many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches totalled 800-1,000 or more people each week.
This evening, I am truly grateful to the real readers among those 34 million hits on this blog to date, and in particular I am thankful for the faithful core group of 120-140 people who join me in prayer, reading and reflections each morning.
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