Hotels & Accommodations

Employer contributions to the national health insurance fund IKA-ETAM will be cut by five percent next year, Labor Minister Ioannis Vroutsis informed the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels on Monday 10 September. The reduction next year will follow an already announced reduction of 1.1 percent in social security contributions.

The subsidized social tourism holiday programs that were cancelled this year are scheduled to re-launch in 2013, according to Labor Minister Ioannis Vroutsis. The social tourism programs provided subsidized vacations to low-income Greeks.

“These bogus apartments-to-let have not decreased and even more have opened and are even advertised via the most known and reliable tourism sites as establishments that provide high quality services …

Several hotels in Athens and Thessaloniki are near a financial crunch as the unpaid bills for the hosting of Libyan rebel fighters are now near some 30 million euros, the Greek press said last month.

The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels last month re-submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security to reform and take on the subsidized social tourism holiday programs of the abolished Workers’ Welfare Organization (OEE).

The Creta Maris Green Team—the environmental group of the Creta Maris Beach Resort—on 9 August helped clean up the beach area that starts from the hotel until the Agia Paraskevi church.

Greece was the least optimistic in Europe as 59 percent of Greek hoteliers from large properties said they believed the economy would get worse, according to the “Mid-year TripAdvisor Industry Index” report released recently by leading travel website TripAdvisor.

Although bookings in Greece were reported to have increased following the June elections, the same cannot be said for reservations in major cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki due to the decrease of domestic tourism and cancellations of conferences and events, a tourism professional said last month.

“The Greek tourism market was significantly affected by the political uncertainty that intensified after the (first) elections of 6 May,” the president of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, Yiorgos Tsakiris, said at a recent press conference.

The “highly disappointing” figures of hotel occupancy in the Greek capital were confirmed late June by the Athens-Attica Hotel Association in collaboration with GBR Consulting.