Tourism Development Minister Meets PM

Tourism Development Minister Fanni-Palli Petralia recently met with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis where she outlined the activity in Greek tourism for the second quarter of 2007. She told him that we are now at the peak of the tourism period and “it is clear that there has been a significant increase overall, as I can say with all certainty that there has been a ten percent increase compared with the same period last year.”

The tourism development minister added that last year we had “some 15.7 billion visitors and this year this number will exceed 16 million.”

She also mentioned that up to this point there has been an increase in tourism currency of up to nine percent and specified that last year tourism currency amounted to 14.7 billion euros.

After the meeting Ms. Petralia spoke on the anniversary of the three years since the Olympic games in Athens and claimed the success of the games has given Greece a dynamic push in development that continues to be capitalized in many sectors of the tourism and travel industry.

“The positive image of Greece achieved by the Olympic games has had a tangible result in so far as arrivals are concerned,” she further explained. The minister said the increase in tourist arrivals in 2005 was 5.6 percent, which was followed by 8.44 percent in 2006 and a record high increase of some 10 percent in 2007. She said, this is directly related to institutional reforms that came about after the success of the Olympics in Athens.