Hospitality News

Occasional hotel reviews on the TripAdvisor website with unfavorable comments that do not correspond to reality have caused problems for Greek hoteliers, according to the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels.

Athens suffered the biggest losses during the first seven months of the year in regards to the number of tourists visiting Greece, the latest figures released by the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) showed.

The draft bill on the new development law steers away from present tourism policy and from the established positions of the tourism industry, the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels said last month.

“The boutique apartments are designed to combine aesthetics with quality and services do not fall below those offered by hotels in the city,” Maria Sarafoglou, manager of the Myrties Boutique Apartments on Kalymnos Island, recently said.

The revamped and inspired by the park of Pedion tou Areos, the Park Hotel Athens brings a new proposal for accommodation in the Greek capital.

The new five-star Apollonia Resort & Spa recently opened its doors in Xi, Lixouri, on Kefalonia and claims to be determined to give the region a different perspective and create conditions for quality tourism.

Almost two weeks after the violent anti-austerity protests in Athens center on 5 May, during which three people died in a fire set by self-styled anarchists, some 28,000 hotel room reservations were canceled in the Greek capital and the trend is steadily rising, Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association General Secretary Alexandros Vasilikos told journalists last month. The data is from 68 central hotels (out of some 450 hotels in Attica).

The Special Secretariat for Digital Planning of the Ministry of Economy, Competitiveness and Shipping recently announced the approval of 2,143 investment proposals to take part in the Digi-Lodge funding program for hotel lodgings.

The total outcome in regards to hotel bookings during this year’s Easter holiday did not satisfy Greek hoteliers but hasty conclusions should not be made in regards to the season’s final result, President of the Hellenic Federation of Hoteliers Andreas Andreadis advised last month.

Greek hotels produced a two percent increase in the average price per room in 2009, according to the Hotel Price Index (HPI) survey released recently by U.K. website Hotels.com.