Event News

The Athens Development and Destination Management Agency recently presented the Athens Convention Bureau’s (ACB) new action plan and membership package for 2012-2013 and invited Greek enterprises involved directly or indirectly with conference tourism to join the program.

Greece was promoted last month through cuisine, nutrition and local products, in a vivid, experiential way, through the “Sympossio Greek Gourmet Touring” event organized by Aldemar Hotels and Spa Group and Yades-Greek Historic Hotels.

“Follow the advice of Woody Allen (US movie actor, comedian and director) that 80 percent of success is just showing up…Go where the users are, go where the users are looking for you,” the general director of Google Greece, Stefanos Loukakos, said last month when he opened the Google Travel Forum held in Athens.

“This conference launches a three-year strategy to build the capacity and presence of women in business leadership through actions to promote active ‘sponsorship’ of gender diversity at the top of organizations,” President of the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce (BHCC) Eugenia Chandris said while opening the “Women in Business–Leadership Redefined” event held recently at the Metropolitan Hotel in Athens.

“We were considered a heavy industry until the State decided to proceed with the collection of property tax through electricity,” President of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels Yiorgos Tsakiris said during the chamber’s first ever general meeting hosted at the Metropolitan Expo Center in Athens. The general meeting was organized on the sidelines of the Xenia hospitality equipment trade fair, held 25-28 November 2011.

Travelport, a broad-based business services provider to the global travel industry, held a workshop last month for travel agencies in Rethymno, Crete, to brief travel agents on the company’s new tools and solutions.

The Greek tourism sector may have been somewhat reluctant in participating in the 27th Philoxenia International Tourism Exhibition due to the country’s financial crisis but according to Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister George Nikitiadis, 2011 could be easily labeled as a “record year” for Greek tourism.

President of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) Giorgos Telonis, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister George Nikitiadis, Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Geroulanos and his Turkish counterpart, Ertugrul Gunay during the 8th Greek-Turkish Forum on Tourism that took place last month in Athens.

Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos was elected Chairman of the UNWTO Commission for Europe for the next two years, last month during the 19th Session of the General Assembly of UNWTO in Korea.

“Technology is the only opportunity to develop tourism in Greece and overcome the economic crisis,” was one of the many conclusions drawn during the official presentation of the Greek chapter of the International Federation for IT in Travel and Tourism (IFITT) held recently at the Hilton Athens.