Destinations

While the Greek capital counted losses last month in bookings and revenue due to violent protests at Syntagma Square in late June that resulted to some 20,000 cancelations in 21 central hotels in Athens, tourism traffic for the rest of Greece showed positive signs.

The Culture and Tourism Ministry will upgrade 169 museums and archaeological sites, the Greek press said last month.
According to the revamp scheme and a time schedule set by the ministry, 20 museums and archaeological sites should be completed by the end of this summer while the remaining 149 will go up to the A1 category over the next three years.

“We are very pleased that Athens is one of the six destinations of our summer program… Transavia.com will offer travel to Amsterdam at a reasonable and attractive price, accompanied by a high level of service,” the commercial director of Dutch budget carrier transavia.com, William Hondius, said during a press conference in Athens in late June.

Visitors to Athens are now offered additional assistance to get around the city as the Athens Tourism and Economic Development Company (ATEDCo) launched two new info-points last month in centrally located spots: the intersection of Amalias Avenue and Dionysiou Areopagitou and the cruise ship arrival terminal at the Piraeus Port Authority.

“Last year 148,532 Greek tourists visited Spain and left behind 158 million euros in revenue for the country,” Arturo Claver, the director of new markets of Turespana (Spanish Tourism Organization), said at a media briefing in Athens last month. Mr. Klaver said by 2015 Turespana wants to attract 200,000 Greeks to Spain.

Greece ranked second place on the Blue Flag quality award list among 41 countries but with 34 beaches short compared to 2010, according to information recently provided by the Hellenic Society for the Protection of Nature.

Dubrovnik last year had 32.567 arrivals from Greece (75 percent increase from 2009) and 70.697 overnights from Greece (66 percent increase from 2009), according to a presentation on the Croation city presented at an event held recently by Croatia Airlines at the Hilton Athens.

The possibility of Tripoli’s military airport also operating as a civil airport for low cost carriers was recently approved at the Regional Council of the Peloponnese.

The first Hellenic Travel and Trade Center that aims to promote Greek tourism destinations, enterprises and traditional products to Scandinavia, opened to the public last month in Oslo, Norway.

“The primary issue is to restore order and to consolidate a sense of security to those who are in central Athens, whether they are tourists, businessmen or permanent residents, and then everything else will fall into place,” the president of the Athens-Attica Hotel Association and the Hellenic Federation of Hoteliers, Yiannis Retsos, said during a recent interview to a Greek radio station.