Hotels & Accommodations

At least one Greek tourism enterprise seems to have taken to heart the potential gains as described in last year’s edition of the Hellenic Tourism Organization’s manual entitled “Making Europe Accessible for Tourists with Disabilities.”

Overnights in the Athens area dropped an average drop of 11.5% last year when compared with 2002, according to statistics released last month by the Attica Hoteliers’ Association. The association says the drop is phenomenal considering it took place the year prior to Athens holding the Olympic Games.

The Attica hotel owners association met with the head of Hellenic Tourism Properties recently to discuss the construction of a convention center at the old Athens International Airport at Hellenikon. When and if completed, the center will accommodate 8,000 participants. A hotel will also be built.

The Blue Palace Resort & Spa at Elounda on Crete as of January entered the privileged club of distinctive hotels when it became a member of the Starwood Luxury Collection. The collection is classed as “the world’s most extraordinarily unique of hotels and resorts.” Blue Star is the fifth Greek unit to be accepted into the collection and Roeland Vos, Starwood Hotels & Resort’s president for Europe, Africa and the Middle East, says there is a possibility the more Greek units will enter the club.

The Riva Hotel in the Athens Illisia area is no more. In its place is the new luxury Stratos Vassilikos, an up-market hotel that is different from all the rest. Owner Airotel stripped down the Riva to its bare bones and constructed something different for the traveler.

The deluxe Park Hotel, opposite one of the capital’s biggest parks, completed three years of intensive and extensive renovations last month with the opening of its St’ Astra (to the stars) gourmet bar and restaurant on its closed-in roof garden overlooking the city’s Acropolis, Lykavitto, and its Pedion of Areos Park. The multi-million-dollar project (800 million euros) has turned the hotel into one sought after by business travelers.

Thessaloniki’s Makedonia Palace recently completed the second phase of renovations, which included the radical upgrade of rooms. The all-new rooms now sport material and carpeting from European fabric houses. The predominate feeling on entering each room is one of luxury.

Over 22,000 Athens homes have been offered for rental to foreign visitors during this summer’s Olympics, officials managing the program said last month.

Greek hoteliers described tourism as being at its lowest ebb in 30 years, “and the government is doing nothing to help,” said Vassilis Miniades, president of the Panhellenic Hoteliers’ Association, during a recent press call.

Government and Olympic organizers have failed to properly advertise Athens as an international tourist destination, hoteliers complained during a recent press conference. “They encouraged us to invest heavily in order to boost the capital’s hotel infrastructure ahead of the 2004 Games but they have not held their promise to promote the city,” said the president of the Attica Hoteliers Association, Girogos Tsakiris.