The Greek tourism industry, which was hoped to contribute to the country’s recovery, is in crisis. Hundreds of hotels are for sale, and visitor numbers are in sharp decline. The cash-strapped government is hardly in a position to help.
The season got off to a late start this year. It is mid-May, there is bright sunshine in the skies over Greece, and Dimitris Fassoulakis is standing on the abandoned terrace of his hotel on the southern coast of Crete. The lobby and the restaurant are empty, and there is no one in the pool. “Pick a spot,” says the manager, spreading his arms widely.
Fassoulakis’s bungalows complex Valley Village, which is located on the green outskirts of Matala, a former hippie bastion, has 70 rooms and more than 200 beds, only eight of which are occupied at the moment. The vacation season in Crete normally begins in early April, sometimes even at the end of March. But this year the hotelier has only just opened his doors, with 50 of the 210 days in the season already gone before it has even begun.
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Where are the rioters and anarchists? They have successfully driven the tourism trade to safer venues – hot sun and ocean breezes are available in many locations. I have never been to Greece – we were supposed to travel in the late 70′s but a massacre at an airport by anti-government revolutionaries changed our plans. Want to bet some of those freedom fighters ended up in the civil service? We travelled to Britian, France and Italy instead. Nothing is new in Greece. Cheers.
And the Bolsheviks rioting in the streets in Greece can’t see they are slitting their own throats? Not terribly bright. Perhaps it is time to let Darwin take over.
It’s a shame really. Greece is beautiful (well most of it, anyway), but it has the collective IQ of a teenager.
Re: #2 — “Greece is beautiful” — so it is and so are the people but they have been lied to for so long by communists and socialists they no longer can tell truth from fiction.
Same, same for much of the EU (including Britain).
Now they are up against it and it’s time for family sit downs and honest talk about what happens next. I doubt that will happen but I point out Russia as a starting spot for what is in store if by chance there is someone “over there” who can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time.
The lesson would be instructive.
Socialists are burning bank tellers to death there. There are better places to visit.