Destinations

The necessary route cuts to and from Athens were covered by alliances that Olympic Air secured with other airlines but a similar move was not made for Thessaloniki, which adds to the city’s further aviation isolation, the Professional Chamber of Thessaloniki recently said.

The Ministry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works recently announced a tender for the construction and management of a one-billion-euro new airport on Crete in the Kastelli area. The new airport is scheduled to replace the existing Nikos Kazantzakis Airport at Heraklio.

Thessaloniki presents a significant setback in air transport and shipping, according to a research study conducted recently by the Professional Chamber of Thessaloniki.

Athens may not be among the most expensive cities in the world but it is a middle-ranking one, according to the recent study “Prices and Earnings-2009 edition” published by Swiss banking group UBS. The study compared the purchasing power of citizens in 73 cities around the globe.

Drug dealing, public drug use, trafficking, muggings and clashes that involve illegal immigrants have degraded one end of the historic center of Athens-the Omonia Square area-to the extent that local hotel reservations in the area have been affected up to 40 percent, Athenian hoteliers recently told GTP.

No advertising campaign, no matter how ambitious it is, can deliver if the visitor does not feel safe and does not like what he sees when he walks around, according to the President of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA), Argyro Phili.

Tourism Minister Kostas Markopoulos called a meeting during the summer to focus on the issue of security in downtown Athens on the occasion of the peak tourist season.

Tourism Minister Kostas Markopoulos honored the prefecture of Lesvos at an event in Athens after the island recently received the award for top sustainable tourism destination in Greece for 2009 in the European Commission’s third “European Destinations of Excellence” (EDEN) project.

Athens Mayor Nikitas Kaklamanis recently said that a municipal info booth might be created on the ground floor of the entertainment store Public at Syntagma Square.

Rodos appeared to be almost unaffected by the global economic crisis as marine tourism for the month of June showed an increase of 16.67 percent over the same period in 2008, according to official figures from the security office of the island’s port.