What’s holding back the extension of the Greek tourism season

Tourism sector players are signaling that the “plan” to extend the tourist season beyond October-November is fading, considering who consider such a prospect unattainable at least for this year, due to the lack of infrastructure, personnel and air connections. Most hotels in the island regions will close by the end of October at the latest, while only some units in Rhodes, Kos and Crete will operate until the beginning of November.

Information from the Ministry of Tourism reported last month that a specific plan was to be implemented for the organized arrival of tourists after November, as well as for the successful transition to a winter tourism model, with an emphasis on hotels in the country’s mountainous areas.

The provision of incentives to airlines and tour operators to continue routes and tourist packages after the end of October in areas such as Crete, Rhodes, Corfu and the Peloponnese was to be included in the plan.

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However, hoteliers, especially in the region, report that “this is a promising development”, but as the president of the Panhellenic Federation of Hoteliers (POX), Grigoris Tassios pointed out , “the extension of the tourist season cannot be done in haste for this year”. This, Mr. Tassios points out, requires planning months inadvance, something that Mallorca and Turkey do, both of which are heavily booked for the winter season because they have been doing this for 20-25 years. For example, in September a large supermarket chain in Germany advertised packages of 660 euros per person with a plane ticket to Antalya.

According to the hoteliers, it is not simple for a plane to land on an island in the winter and for the customer to go to the hotel for accommodation. A seasonal hotel cannot remain open during the winter months if it has not secured sufficient occupancy to at least cover its operating costs. On the other hand, will the tourists, who roam outside the hotels, find open restaurants and will they have options for their entertainment? But the main thing is that there will be no flights for their movements, the representatives of the hotel industry point out, stressing that so far there have not been final agreements with enough hotels to be able to maintain a summer destination open after November.

What the hoteliers garnered from the move of the Ministry of Tourism is that the idea that the Greek tourism can bloom beyond the summer tourist season, has been put on the table.

Reservations

In Corfu, hoteliers state that there are no bookings for the period beyond October. According to the representatives of the industry, the start of the procedures for the extension of the season should be activated very early, in order for the hoteliers to be prepared, but also for the local authorities to have made moves to correct various wrongs, such as e.g. waste management or improvements to the Internet network, which is important to visitors.

For their part, even representatives of major hotels in Athens do not see any significant change in bookings. Some large hotels will benefit from conference tourism.