As tourism doesn’t properly roll this year, let’s skip it and wait next year. This is what more or less Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday speaking at the 28th Ordinary General Assembly of the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE).
“The first victim of the coronavirus in the world is tourism and we must in no way underestimate the magnitude of the economic crisis we are experiencing. It is the biggest financial crisis in 70 years, Mitsotakis said adding that “the tourism sector is at the forefront,” of this crisis.
This powerful tourism engine for Greece is being carefully restarted, the prime minister said, adding that “we will reopen the tourism market.”
“Above all with rules of safety for employees and visitors and with a desire that this summer should become an epilogue to the problems but also a prelude to new successes next season. The experience, the plan and the capabilities exist: Let’s turn this crisis into an opportunity,” he underlined.
“Let’s use the time we have so that the plan for the next decade in tourism, in 2021-2030, corrects many of the chronic problems that all of us have at times carefully swept under the rug, relying instead on some very encouraging short-term figures,” Mitsotakis said.
The prime minister pointed out that the state should and did support the people of the market and labour in general, and he referred to the package of measures taken by the government to support businesses that were forced to suspend their operation, as well as to help companies and individual meet their tax obligations. ” I think that in this way, we managed to avoid the worst,” he said.
“We are here to see if additional support is needed for production forces and, if it is necessary, I believe that by the end of July, we will not hesitate to give it,” he said, stressing that the government has proven that it is listening to market forces, talking to the labour market and intervening with measures whenever this is needed, in order to mitigate the effects of the unprecedented crisis.
PS For sure, some tourism entrepreneurs will survive this year and can make plans for the next and the years to follow. That’s the big entrepreneurs. The small ones can see how they will survive this summer, the autumn, and the upcoming spring.
Just move away from that parasitical tourism industry. It should be marginal by definition, it is hosting visitors. Not attracting them and let them outnumber locals and their culture.
Go into other economic activities, the country is rich in resources, engineers and creative entrepreneurs. What did the Germans do a long time ago with very little resources, no harbours, etc.? They invented the cuckoo clock. Just sit at your kitchen table or in your work shop, at your computer and come up with something out of nothing. Never before has it been so easy.
But tourism? Nah, just don’t.
I have some sympathy with ReinderR’s views on tourism swamping local culture and diversification is long overdue in Greece. However, this would have to be a long-term plan and require a strong political will to achieve. How this would change the economies of many of the islands who, traditionally, rely on agriculture alongside tourism, I cannot envisage. A total reliance on an agricultural economy is a non-starter as the markets and returns simply do not exist that could support such a move.
Let’s face it: tourism is here to stay in its many forms.
How about, as a small starter, archaeological tourism…..you pay to work on excavations?
In my younger days I would certainly have signed up for that one.