Enterprise Greece: 250 Greek Tourism Projects Available for Investment

Some 250 Greek hoteliers and tourism entrepreneurs have turned to Enterprise Greece, aiming to strike deals with strategic investors and proceed with plans for development.

“These are hotels seeking reorganization or renovation and looking for strategic investment partners… A number of these projects include available areas for tourism development,” Enterprise Greece Deputy Director of Investment Facilitation Elias Eliades said on Thursday. Enterprise Greece is the official investment and trade promotion agency of Greece.

Speaking to journalists during a press conference for the upcoming Mediterranean Resort & Hotel Real Estate Forum (MR&H) 2019 in Athens, Eliades said that out of the 250 available tourism investment projects in Enterprise Greece’s portfolio, a 30 percent of them are in a “mature stage”, ranging in value from a few to many tens of millions of euros.

Moreover, he mentioned that 21 investment projects in Enterprise Greece’s portfolio have been included in the “fast track” procedure, nine of which are tourism-related. Greece’s “fast track” procedure facilitates strategic investment projects and accelerates their licensing process.

Enterprise Greece Deputy Director of Investment Facilitation Elias Eliades, Horwath HTL Greece Country Director Xenophon Petropoulos and Questex Hospitality Group Managing Director of EMEA Alexi Khajavi.

“Three of these nine projects are already in the implementation phase and two are on their way to receive approval from the inter-ministerial committee on strategic investments,” he said, adding that an additional ten tourism projects are still under evaluation by Enterprise Greece.

“Out of all these mentioned projects, the number of entrepreneurs looking for ‘death spiral financing’ is very small. Most of the businesses in our portfolio are hotels looking for an investor in order to strengthen their position in the market… We are mainly dealing with development projects,” Eliades underlined.

Enterprise Greece (former Invest in Greece) runs under the supervision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We have a promotional and informative role. We identify investment opportunities, promote them and then inform interested investors about the country’s existing investment framework… Our role is to promote Greece as an investment destination, on the basis of some very specific investment opportunities… One can also call us the official gateway to doing business in the country,” Eliades said.

MR&H Forum 2019

The MR&H Forum 2019 is expected to attract some 400 attendees and 90 speakers to Athens in late October. The event’s main goal is to “connect” the Greek hospitality sector with its global hotel investors, operators and advisers. Twenty-nine countries will be represented while approximately 220 billion euros of hotel assets under management will be attending.

“The MR&H conference is a high-end conference, held in Athens, Greece for second consecutive year, giving Greece the opportunity to showcase investment opportunities in a very dynamic sector such as tourism,” Eliades underlined.

“The timing is excellent and demonstrates a series of niche products for Greece, such as resorts, conference tourism, medical tourism, port utilization and ultimately establishes Greece as the heart for International Tourism Conventions, conference tourism for international conglomerates, organizations and large corporations,” he added.