Initiatives

The first Hellenic Travel and Trade Center that aims to promote Greek tourism destinations, enterprises and traditional products to Scandinavia, opened to the public last month in Oslo, Norway.

Westfield London, Europe’s largest urban shopping center, on 19-27 March featured a 1.500 square meter Greek Theme Park on its ground floor atrium and depicted all aspects of Greek tourism.

The second phase of the “Greece, a part of our soul” awareness campaign that aims to attract domestic tourism back to Greece was launched by the Alliance for Greece group at an event held last month at the amphitheater of the Theodore Karatzas Megaron, National Bank of Greece.

“The ‘Greek Breakfast’ project is an effort of great importance to improve the competitiveness of Greek hotels and for the promotion of Greek cuisine as a means for the development of Greek tourism,” the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels said last month.

“The Jewish element played an important role in the city’s trade and culture and we must not forget that the leader of the socialists in Thessaloniki was Jewish,” Thessaloniki Mayor Yiannis Boutaris told the Israeli press recently. Mr. Boutaris is also the president of the city’s tourism promotion organization.

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.

Two postgraduate study programs on religious tourism are to operate through partnerships of three Greek universities and the Church of Greece, according to a framework agreement signed recently at an assembly hosted at the Holy Monastery of Penteli.

The development of school tourism to Greek students and students of abroad through the promotion of Greece as a student destination with attractive package offers, was recently the topic of discussion between the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA), the Culture and Tourism Ministry and the Ministry of Education, Lifelong Learning and Religious Affairs.

Greek breakfast will be established in all hotels of the country as a start of the promotion of Greek cuisine as one of the most key representative forms of Greek tourism, Hellenic Chamber of Hotels representative, Yiorgos Pittas, said recently.

The Organization for Rhodian Tourism Promotion (PROTOUR) recently announced it would follow the example of international destinations and attempt to develop health tourism on the island and form a lucrative new source of revenue for Rodos.