Trade Associations

Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister George Nikitiadis last month paved the way for the creation of visa centers in Antalya and Bodrum (Halicarnassus) so to facilitate the movement of tourists to Rodos and Kos and other islands of the Dodecanese.

The former La Mirage hotel that overlooks Omonia Square is to be converted into a student hall of residence, according to a recently announced joint initiative by the Environment Ministry, the City of Athens and the Hellenic Air Force pension fund that owns the premises.

Former vice president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos, was designated Greece’s new interim Prime Minister on 10 November in a new coalition government composed by the PASOK, New Democracy and LAOS political parties.

President of the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) Giorgos Telonis, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister George Nikitiadis, Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Geroulanos and his Turkish counterpart, Ertugrul Gunay during the 8th Greek-Turkish Forum on Tourism that took place last month in Athens.

“The coming years could be very exciting for the Greek tourism product as long as the promises of its establishment within the central development policy actually take place,” the president of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels, Yiorgos Tsakiris, said recently during the tourism session of the Capital+Vision multi-conference held at Hilton Athens in late September 2011.

“Your repeated strikes, walkouts and “white strikes” are killing tourism and have brought all domestic tourism businesses to the verge of destruction,” the Pan-Hellenic Federation of Tourism Enterprises (GEPOET) stressed last month in a letter to the Greek Air Traffic Controllers’ Association.

World Tourism Day was celebrated on 27 September globally around the theme “Tourism–Linking Cultures” and highlighted tourism’s role in bringing the cultures of the world together and promoting global understanding through travel.

“Our first priority is to attract more investment to Greece through tourism in order to attract more visitors… These are the two main pillars we are working on,” Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Yeroulanos said to the press last month after he presented the government’s strategy for the development of Greek tourism for 2011-2021 to the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises’ (SETE) Board of Directors.

After a suspension of mobilizations in August, Greek taxi owners and drivers resumed protest action in September in response to the government’s proposed law to liberalize the taxi sector and lift all restrictions on the number of licenses issued.

The Halkidiki Hotel Association recently organized a four-day fam trip to Chalkidiki and Thessaloniki for gay German journalists in an attempt to approach the gay travel market.