Israel-Greece Conference Focuses on Hotels and Tourism Demand

Panel discussion on The Global and Local Tourism and Factors Shaping the Future of Travel at the Israel-Greece conference. From left: Israel-Greece Chamber of Commerce CEO Cobi Bitton, Greek Deputy Tourism Minister Sofia Zacharaki, Former Greek Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis, Greek Travel Pages (GTP) CEO Maria Theofanopoulou and Hellenic Federation of Hoteliers President Grigoris Tasios.

Following global trends, investing, taking risks, and innovating are the secrets behind the success of Greek hotels which are very much behind the robust traveler demand for Greece, said Hellenic Hoteliers Federation (POX) President Grigoris Tasios during the “Israel-Greece Conference” this week held at Brown Hotels’ new 5-star project: the Isla Brown Corinthia in Loutraki.

“The strong demand for Greece demonstrates that we hoteliers are doing something right,” he said during the conference, which focused on travel, real estate, energy and innovation.

“Greece can be confident in the world tourism arena. It offers modern, quality hotel services that make a difference in hospitality, creating unique experiences,” he said.

“We follow global trends, dare, invest, take risks, innovate. And we do all of this well, because above all we want to reciprocate the trust of our visitors,” Tasios added.

‘2022 will be a good year’

Hellenic Hoteliers Federation President Grigoris Tasios and Brown Hotels CEO Oshri Deri..

Looking ahead, Tasios said he expects 2022 to be a good year, definitely better that in 2021 as we “move into a season that appears to be much like pre-pandemic normality”, he said.

“This makes us optimistic about 2023.” Challenges aside, “realistically we can expect from 2023 onwards that we will reach and possibly exceed the performance of 2019, which was a record year”, he said.

On the sidelines of the conference, Tasios met with entrepreneurs from Israel and with Brown Hotels CEO Oshri Deri, with whom he discussed opening the way for Greek startups to provide digital tourism technologies and solutions.

In this direction, he referred to the CapsuleT initiative, Greece’s first travel and hospitality accelerator, a  Hellenic Chamber of Hotels (HCH) initiative which in its three years has helped more than 70 startup companies enter the market.