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Victoria Mindova

Tourist turnover in Greece is drastically fell down with €1 billion—in other words in comparison to last year is has dropped with 16%. The results are based on a research done by GBR Consultants for the Greek Hotel Chamber among 10 000 hotels throughout the country. 2008 data show an increase in tourism with a total income of €150-€200 billion. Independently of the success of city hotels in the last three months, last year’s success is unreachable for this year. Best case scenario is a fall of 13.5% for the total tourism profit.

“2010 will be very hard,” said Andreas Andreadis – Greek Hotel Chamber director – for journalists at the eve of the International Tourism Fair opening, which will take place in Thessaloniki between October 29 and November 1, as part of HelExpo. The tourist drop can be explained in two ways – the fall of the Dollar in comparison to the British Pound and the 20% cheaper destinations offered by Egypt and Turkey. The tourist increase from countries like Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia cannot compensate the decreased number of tourists from countries like Germany and Great Britain.

Andreas Andreadis pointed our attention at the fact that income from tourists in Greece is 18% from the GDP and the tourist associations have borrowed only 6% out of all given business credits. Regarding this the president of the Chamber called for all trade banks to support this extremely important for the Greek economy field by creating special programs for financing and development in the future.

Regarding the newly elected government, Andreadis stressed that the Ministry of Tourism needs to pay special attention at tourism and to immediately take action for preventing a harder 2010.