Nikos Angelopoulos

President,
Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises

Philoxenia 2008 greeting.

If we want to track the prospects of Greek tourism toward its expected development in size, but also with regards to the dynamics of size, we must evaluate the elements within the national and international economic environment.

The economic crisis in our customer’s countries of origin inevitably create a halt of any flow towards our country, while the decline in the percentage of preference will possibly cause additional negative results to our tourism and to thenational economy in general.

The expected increases of incoming tourism from the countries of Eastern Europe cannot balance the significant losses from the traditional countries of origin of our customers neither in the short term nor the medium term.

If we continue this inactivity and do not take serious measures for the development of the tourism sector through a targeted central policy, any efforts and improvements that have been made in recent years by the tourism ministry for the promotion of the Greek tourism product can not cause the positive reversal that the tourism sector needs in order to escape from poor performance in relation to its actual capabilities and deliver results that can support the gross domestic product, the balance of payments, employment and a balanced regional development.

SETE would like to express its congratulations to GTP for this annual issue dedicated to Philoxenia and give its best wishes for every future success.