HATTA Calls For United Stance Against Crisis

The economic crisis dominated this year’s general assembly of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies that recently took place.

HATTA President Argyro Phili underlined the need of support for tourism entrepreneurship particularly in regards to the liquidity of firms and targeted promotion abroad. “Greek tourism is up against a difficult year so the state and all tourism bodies must cooperate and stand united to achieve the common goal,” she said.

Nikos Angelopoulos, president of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, once again referred to “inevitable layoffs” in the Greek tourism industry and urged for the expansion of employment subsidies offered to enterprises.

Speaking on behalf of the tourism ministry, Secretary General Meletios Tzaferis said that the ministry is in the process of a dialogue to draft new legislation to deal with problems that travel agents face.

He also added that a travel guarantee agency is scheduled to operate that aims to protect travelers from travel agency omissions.

On the other hand, the president of the Hellenic Hotel Chamber, Gerassimos Fokas, made reference to the controversial issue of the hotel chamber’s transformation into a tourism chamber.

“This transformation will be an act of effective cooperation of all those responsible for the promotion of Greek tourism,” he said.