Major Tourism Projects Planned This Year

At least five major tourism projects are expected to get underway this year. Two are completely new projects initiated by the Municipality of Katerinis (Pieria) and by the Elia Prefecture (Peloponissos).

The municipality says it will create a theme park at Mount Olympos and exploit municipality properties on the Katerini seaside. The project, worth some 500 million euros, is expected to open new tourism and development possibilities for the area.

The Elia Prefecture intends to create a major golf course at a cost of some 200 million euros. Tourism enterprises in the area have been trying to get such a project off the ground for years and are thus fully supportive of the prefecture’s move.

Three other projects – Messinia, Lasithi, Corfu – are also expected to get underway this year after being pushed to the back burner continuously because of bureaucratic red tape.

The gigantic Messinia project includes hotels, golf courses, thalasa therapy, a conference center and athletic installations. It includes three tourism properties of around 1,400 stremma each. The project has been on the drawing board for almost a decade, but it finally looks like all the bureaucratic problems have been solved.

Lasithi, Crete, will see a tourism investment project worth around 600 million euros executed by Loyalward Limited of Britain. It will include five tourism villages with a total of some 7,000 beds, as well as three golf courses, a conference center, an open-air theater, an environmental and cultural center, and an athletic center.

On Corfu, the island will experience a major investment for the area’s casino and the long-term leasing and development of the area’s “SEF” marina. Both properties are owned by the state’s Greek Tourism Properties.