Blight on tourism

Greece keeps breaking new records in tourist arrivals, yet there are a number of extremely important and persistent problems that it should be dealing with, especially when it comes to key infrastructure issues.

One of the most obvious cases is the area of waste management, where the country is still dragging its feet. The problem has become more than evident this summer on the Saronic holiday island of Aegina and also in the prefecture of Ilia in the Peloponnese, where mountains of trash are a daily challenge. At many major destinations, we are also seeing biological waste treatment plants packing up as soon as population numbers rise and exceed their capacity.

These are problems that can only be addressed with planning and foresight, not by quick-fix solutions, and right now they are a serious stain on the way that the millions of foreign visitors view this country. Let us hope that this is the last summer that Greek tourism suffers from such oversights.