Industry Reports & Trends

“The slander against our country weighs heavily during this particularly sensitive period in which early bookings are in process for this year’s tourism season,” the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) said last month in regards to the violent street protests that took place on 12 February during the voting of an unpopular austerity bill demanded by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

“The future of travel is likely to be shaped by technological innovations, which reduce stress, uncertainty and chaos,” according to a global industry study, commissioned by travel technology partner Amadeus, that reveals how new technologies and social change will combine to transform travel by 2020.

Greece was among destinations that members of the US Tour Operators Association (USTOA) plan to increase tours to this year, according to the association’s annual survey. The survey revealed forecasts for 2012 travel.

“Modern tourism has a very special character as firstly, it evolved from a hobby of the elite to a part of the everyday life of the population of most developed countries and secondly, tourism is a new and very dynamic part of the global economy both in terms of growth and its share in world trade (between 12 and 15 percent),” Seppo Aho, adjunct professor, director of development, faculty of social sciences, University of Lapland, said recently in Athens.

“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.

Although the number of cruise tourists from stopovers at Greek ports last year increased considerably (6,155,609 against 5,719,259 in 2010), major profits expected from the recent lifting of cabotage restrictions for non-European Union flag cruise ships would take a while to show, cruise industry experts recently told the Greek press.

Domestic tourism showed disappointing figures during the last holiday season as Greeks considered travel an “unaffordable luxury” and preferred to stay and celebrate the Christmas and New Year holidays at home, press reports said recently.

“Tourism went well this year,” Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos said during an interview to the Greek press in late December.

Athens continued to satisfy its visitors in 2011 despite the serious problems the destination faced in 2010, according to a study by GBR Consulting on customer satisfaction and the performance of hotels in Attica.

“The hotels in Athens are collapsing,” was the comment of the Athens-Attica Hotel Association in a recent announcement in regards to the city’s hotel performance for the month of November 2011. Αccording to data from the association, the average hotel occupancy in Athens-Attica dropped by 23.63 percent last November.