Santorini Not Suffering from Overtourism, But Limits Are Necessary, Says Hoteliers’ President

Santorini is not suffering from “overtourism”, said the president of the Santorini Hoteliers Association, Antonis Pagonis, being interviewed for Britain’s Express.co.uk.

He accepted though that at times the Greek island in the heart of the Aegean, can be “overcrowded”.

“This overcrowding that occurs in specific places, during specific and limited periods of time on our island, we believe is due to the lack of infrastructure, something that the authorities should see and improve immediately,” insisted Pagonis, also pointing out that the lack of good organization regarding cruise ships for example, leads to “massive crowds disembarking on a single day and the next day…no one!”

Asked by reporter Alice Scarsi of the Express, about his opinion of the recent comments by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, regarding the possibility of capping, beginning next summer, the number of cruise liners approaching popular Greek islands, the president of the Santorini Hoteliers Association said that he and his colleagues welcome any kind of tourism, but that in agreement with Mitsotakis, he also believes that some limits are necessary.

“Our Prime Minister said what we have been saying for years now, that Santorini needs new and modern infrastructure as well as organization from the local authorities and implementation of the berth allocation system to avoid the simultaneous arrival of large cruise ships with thousands of passengers on the same time.”

Santorini.

Interviewed by Bloomberg tv in mid-June, the Greek PM expressed concern about a “suffering” Santorini and Mykonos, with the two islands having welcomed in the summer of 2023 hundreds of cruise ships creating an overtourism crisis and “impacting the islands’ infrastructures, security standards and even their local economies.”

According to statistical figures, 750 cruise ships approached Mykonos in 2023, representing an increase of 23 percent from the year before. The situation on Santorini, an island of about 15,000 permanent residents, was even more “impressive”, with 800 cruise ships bringing last summer a reported 1.3 million daily visitors to its “must” tourist sites.

Yet, in a different approach to mass tourism to his island, famous for its enchanting sunsets, Pagonis asked for a new stay limit of cruise ships of at least ten hours per visit, “so that tourists can explore our beautiful island.”

Besides the cruise visitors, Santorini is estimated to welcome another 700,000 tourists every year, bringing its total to about two million people visiting, most of them between the months of May and October. And the fact is that as the Greek government seems to be preparing to impose limits to this phenomenon, the European Parliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee had already spotted Santorini as an interesting case study back in 2018, when initially looking into the results of overtourism.