Tourism Organization Promotes Via Internet

The Hellenic Tourism Organization implemented its newest and perhaps most expansive tourism promotional activity recently via the Internet. With the basic aim to inform potential tourists of the country’s tourism products, and to promote the same, the organization signed an agreement with the network www.experia.com that will last throughout the summer period.

Organization ads will appear when Internet users search for information on competing destinations, such as Spain, Italy, Turkey, Morocco, etc. In essence, what happens is the organization’s ads will appear on the user’s screen and promote Greece as the best destination for a vacation. The organization’s banner is set to appear 1,450,000 times.

With this method, the organization hopes to entice last-minute buyers to choose Greece as their destination. According to all recent data covering the past two years, but especially this year, a mere 40% of potential holidaymakers had programmed their vacation by the end of May. So, says the organization, the battle is on to entice these last minute buyers.

Greece appears to be doing well with this type of buyer in Britain where promotion emphasis is placed on that country’s Travel Channel and Metro ads. Thus far, Greece is the only destination that shows an increase instead of a drop in arrivals from the UK.

According to the British company A.C. Nielson, travel to Greece from Britain has reversed the negative trend seen in the first few months of this year. Figures for the end of June show that total arrivals for the year reached the same level as the six-month period last year. The Hellenic Tourism Organization’s office in London predicts that by the end of this year arrivals from there to Greece will at least reach last year’s figure of three million.

From Ireland, the office expects to see a 10% increase in arrivals over last year so as to break the 100,000 mark and reach 103,000 arrivals.

Separately, the tourism organization has finally completed the last of three -Delphi-Meteora-Pylos, Corinthos and Argolida- of 12 tourism pamphlets in the Japanese language. All 12 center on quality tourism activities in Greece and on the Olympic Games in Athens.