Hotels & Accommodations

The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels announced last month that it plans to network all Greek hotels with the Amber Alert system to help distribute notices of missing children with the help of hoteliers.

The new development law -effective as of 1 January 2011- lacks sectoral policy and will not benefit the tourism sector, the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels said last month in an announcement to the relevant ministries.

Crime in Athens’ city center continues to give the Greek capital the image of an unattractive destination although Athens has the potential to be featured among the most popular metropolitan destinations in Europe, the president of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, Yiorgos Tsakiris, recently told the Greek press.

The Hellenic Chamber of Hotels has joined forces with hotel associations in Europe in a fight against UK-based holiday company Thomas Cook as it has imposed a unilateral five percent cut on its August and September accommodation invoices for European hotels.

Hotels in the Greek capital saw a 6.1 percent revenue drop for the first eight months of the year while Attica is going through two of the most difficult months of the year (September-October) that will determine the size of the losses, according to the Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association.

Crisp and clean mountain air, nature and snowy landscapes form the backdrop of the first hotel in Livadi, Arachova: the Tagli Resort and Spa.

The exclusion of Athens city center hotels from suggested athlete accommodation would be a tombstone for Athens tourism, the Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association stressed last month in a letter to Joanna Despotopoulou, president of the Special Olympics World Summer Games Athens 2011 Organizing Committee.

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.