Trade Associations

Tourism ministers from Southeastern Europe met in Athens recently under the initiative of Greece’s development minister, Akis Tsohatzopoulos, to sign a tourism cooperation agreement. This followed close on the heels of an agreement signed during the Panorama tourism exhibition by travel agency associations of some of the same countries under an initiative of Yiannis Evangelou, president of the Hellenic Association of Travel & Tourism Agents.

After numerous decades at its offices in downtown Athens on Amerikis Street, the 52-year-old Hellenic Tourism Organization last month moved to bright, new, modern quarters. It now takes up all seven floors of space within a modern office building on Tshoha Street not far from the American Embassy.

The Hellenic Tourism Organization announced six tourism promotional programs worth five million euros where, for the first time, the private sector is invited to participate. Five of the programs, announced earlier this year, are worth 1.5 million euros and will center on athletic tourism, winter tourism, Greek gastronomy, city tourism and religious tourism. A sixth, worth 3.5 million euros, includes four activities on the promotion of the Attica Prefecture.

By mid 2005 the Athens Mitropolitiko Conference & Exhibition Center should be open and operating, says Takis Koumanis, president of the Association of Greek Organizers of Exhibitions and Conferences. He suggests that the total cost of the project would reach 146 million euros.

Leading members of Greece’s tourism community attended the recent general meeting of the Panhellenic Federation of Tourism Enterprises (POET) held in Athens.

Development Minister Akis Tsohatzopoulos during a recent press call said that Greek tourism is heading for recovery following the end of the war in Iraq. He said tourist arrivals will pick up pace later this year following the end of the war in Iraq and despite the threat posed by the SARS epidemic.

An Athens court recently ruled in favor of an injunction brought by the Hellenic Association of Tourism and Travel Agents against the Media & Travel Group, which distributes Travel Card, advertised as offering discount accommodation in over 300 hotels throughout Greece.

Leading tourism organizations in the country in late April endorsed the creation of a tourism chamber in the hopes that such a body would bring the industry up to par with its counterparts throughout Europe and also help lift the sector out of a two-year slump.

Prime Minister Costas Simitis told the 11th annual meeting of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE) last month that he realized the strong euro, the universal economic slowdown and the Iraq war have adversely affected Greek tourism. He also said that he favored SETE becoming the government’s social partner and industry link, along with unions and employers, in thrashing out tourism policies.

The Hellenic Tourism Organization said it would begin its 7.3-million-euro tourism advertising campaign abroad this month. The organization’s president, Yiannis Patellis, said that the campaign’s theme would very much resemble that of last year and announced that Greece had already began an ad campaign with UK’s Travel Channel television station.