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“Our goal is to establish Athens as a final destination instead of a stopover destination through the expansion of its tourism product and for the average spending per visitor to increase,” the chairman of the Athens Development and Destination Management Agency, Yiorgos Broulias, said recently.

“As always, HATTA will assist in the effort to improve the (country’s) tourism product and for the qualitative improvement of tourism services, especially in the sensitive field of culture,” the president of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA), Yiorgos Telonis said last month.

The Greek Olympic team and the Olympic Air crew in front of the Airbus A320 right before takeoff to the 2012 London Olympic Games. Olympic Air, official sponsor of the Hellenic Olympic Committee, carried the athletes to London on 23 July and 13 August.

“The Thessaloniki Convention and Visitors Bureau (TCVB) excels as a destination choice for conference organizers and ICTP (International Council of Tourism Partners) is proud to have it join as a destination member,” ICTP Chairman Juergen T. Steinmetz said in late July.

“My vision is for this Greek company, just as it has started to conquer the major countries of Europe, in two years time to gain a place among the first platforms worldwide,” online booking company Airfasttickets’ president, Nikolaos Koklonis said in late July.

“The main reason Greece has failed to collect from cruises is the low use of Greek ports as homeports,” according to a recent study of the National Bank of Greece on cruise on a European and national level.

Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni will consider adding another form of tourism to the Tourism Ministry’s portfolio, that of cinematic tourism, the Greek press reported last month.

“The improvement of public safety is a prerequisite for tourism development especially in the historic center of the capital but also more widely throughout Athens,” Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni said in late July after a meeting with Public Order and Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Dendias.

The simplification of the procedure for issuing Schengen visas to increase the inflow of tourists to Greece and the protection of the country’s image via crisis management, were two priorities on the agenda of Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni last month.

The number of passengers that disembarked on Greek cruise destinations from circular cruises that homeported in Greece continued to drop in 2011, according to a report presented during the sixth annual conference of the European Cruise Council (ECC) in Brussels.