Trade Associations

“Our statistical data on Greek tourism clearly shows that the country’s tourism is entering a new state of recession of unknown duration,” General Manager of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) George Drakopoulos said.

A special promotional TV spot will be released for Northern Greece very soon, Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Yiorgos Nikitiadis said last month.

The Acropolis was once again used as a bargaining tool last month when employees of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism kept the site closed for four hours as a symbolic protest against the ministry’s failure to pay some of their colleagues.

The deputy minister’s recent statements in Germany that Greece will compensate tourists for delays that are the result of strikes does not honor the country, according to Fedon Kotsampopoulos, spokesman for the German-Greek Business Association (DHW).

“My proposal was not to ban all-inclusive services at hotels but to reward investors of new hotels with extra government subsidies if they choose not to offer such services,” according to Deputy Culture and Tourism Minister Yiorgos Nikitiadis.

“Any decision that affects the viability and prospects of Greek tourism with low benefits is economic suicide, not fiscal policy,” the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels said last month.

“The current tourism leadership, just like the previous one, has managed to devalue the country’s tourism product by some 15 percent, causing tourism’s contribution to Greece’s GDP to shrink from 18 percent in 2008 to 15 percent this year,” according to President of the Hellenic Federation of Hoteliers Andreas Andreadis.

The revenue of Athens-Attica hotels (3-, 4-, and 5-star) fell by 3.6 percent from last year’s January-June period as a result of a 1.2 percent drop in the average hotel occupancy rate and 2.4 percent drop in the average price per room, according to the latest study of GBR Consulting, released by the Athens-Attica Hoteliers Association.

Athens Airways was recently declared in default by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and was annulled from serving the nine state subsidized air route destinations it had undertaken in April. The routes are now assigned to Olympic Air and Sky Express.

Brigkita Papastavrou, president of Greek sustainable tourism organization Agrotima (former Agrotouristiki), recently handed in her resignation to Culture and Tourism Minister Pavlos Geroulanos, Greek press reports said. Her resignation came after a report of the public administration inspectors’ agency went public and said that illegal activities had taken place in regards to the organization’s finances.