Tour operators issue warning about dip in next year’s tourism
For the first time in the last four years, the country’s tourism professionals are pessimistic about the course of Greek tourism next season, even before the current one is over. The mixed picture for this year has revealed some signs of upcoming crisis, with visitors’ numbers remaining at the same levels as in 2007, hotel occupancy rates going down and only tourism revenues going up, according to the most recent data. The main reasons are always put down to the international financial crisis and the internal structural problems of Greek tourism. Now the head of the Greek branch of the major tour operator TUI, Nikos Papathanassis, is telling Kathimerini that one of the most important issues that must be kept under observation is the charter flights that foreign tour operators will schedule for next year under the pressure of the global credit crisis. Tour operators’ current planning seems to have set as a priority the high number of seats sold on flights instead of scheduling more flights, Papathanassis reveals. Similarly, the executive officer in Greece of Spain’s hotel chain Iberostar, Manolis Kritsotakis, has expressed concern that tourism traffic in Greece in 2009 could suffer. Recently the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises (SETE) warned that the main tourism markets of Britain and Germany are in recession.
