Hotel Staff Sole Beneficiaries Of OAED Programs

Travel agencies today are in a dire position and the Greek state has taken no measures to support them, the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) said recently in regards to the Manpower Employment Organization’s (OAED) subsidize programs for hotel employees.

In July, OAED launched two subsidy programs to save working posts in hotels.

The first one aims at the expansion of the tourism season with a grant of social security contributions for the rehiring of 70,000 hotel employees of seasonal and all-year-round hotels.

The second program aims to maintain 10,000 job positions at all-year-round hotels through a grant that would cover an amount of the employees’ benefits.

According to HATTA, the travel agency industry should receive a similar subsidy, as it is a key factor of the tourism industry. The association requested similar measures be taken so travel agencies could maintain their staff.

On its part, the Pan-Hellenic Federation of Tourism Enterprises (GEPOET) wrote a letter to Prime Minister Yiorgos Papandreou and underlined that travel agency employees also face seasonal unemployment and that “this discrimination must end.”

According to GEOPOET, the prime minister himself had announced at the 18th General Assembly of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) last April that travel agency staff are to be included in the subsidy program.