Tourism boom / Longing for the Greek sun

Many hotels on Greek islands are almost fully booked for the summer. Athens currently has more tourists than before the pandemic.

After the Corona low, Greece is experiencing a tourism boom.

Work is underway at Nikos Bouchos’ two hotels in Kallithea Rhodes. The island, especially popular with Germans, is cleaning up. Many hotels are on the home stretch with their renovations. The lists with the pre-bookings are currently overflowing, says Bouchos. “People are longing to have a little vacation after such a long time. Everyone seems can’t wait to get away.”

Offer will be expanded

A desire for vacation after the hoped-for end of the pandemic, which is booming tourism in Greece. In Athens – unlike in the past – city tourism is already booming in the last few weeks of winter. The war in Ukraine seems far away. Jenny, owner of a café in the Plaka nightlife district, is amazed at the rush. “There are so many tourists here,” she says. “In addition to the Greeks, there are already many foreigners here in Plaka. Many, unbelievably many!” Jenny says that she is currently doing almost better business than before the pandemic.

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The German travel group TUI also expects to bring more tourists to Greece this year than in 2019, the pre-Covid record year. The low-cost airline Easyjet is also increasing, offering half a million more seats between Great Britain and Greece compared to the years before the crisis.

Hellas holidays are in demand and there is optimism in the Association of Greek Travel Agencies. “There is indeed a great willingness to travel this year, which is definitely higher than in the bad last year and the catastrophic year before last,” says President Lyssandros Tsilidis. “I don’t know whether we’ll even overtake the top year of 2019. We would actually need higher hotel capacities for that, in order to be able to accommodate more people.”

Strong dependence on tourism

Even matching the all-time record result of 2019 would be a success for Greece’s tourism industry after the lean Covid years – and good news for the country’s economy. Because no country in Europe is as dependent on tourism as Greece. Every fifth euro in the country is earned in tourism, and every fifth job depends on it.

Hotel owner Bouchos believes that the hoped-for top result can be achieved this summer, at least on Rhodes, despite the Ukraine crisis. “Yeah, it looks like it,” he says. “After two years, we will probably finally be able to open in mid-April, as planned. We only have a few capacities left for the summer and demand is currently rising steeply.”

The start of the tourism season is brought forward

In order to equalize demand, the Greek government decided to bring forward the official start of the tourist season in the country: from Greek Easter in mid-April to early March. For Bouchos and his two hotels on Rhodes, this came at too short notice – the renovation work is still going on. But international tour operators and airlines, says Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias, have been pushing to extend the season to bring even more tourists to Greece.

German tour operators praise, among other things, Greece’s “conclusive hygiene concepts and transparency” during the pandemic. It is also paying off for Greece that it has kept large parts of the hotel industry alive with short-time work payments for employees in tourism as well as grants and tax aid for companies.

In gastronomy, which does not only live from tourism, things are not looking so good. According to media reports, four out of ten companies had to close here. Another 320 million euros from the European Union’s corona aid are currently flowing into the Greek tourism infrastructure, including staff training, environmental measures and digitization.