Travel agents in Greece were everything but optimist. They mostly deal with the domestic tourist market and their forecast are ominous. Furthermore they complain that they have been excluded from the government program for subsidized social tourism with the effect that they can hardly manage to restart the sector.
Travel agents had already made gloomy assessments about the tourism season this year, and the reopening of their borders on July 1, emerged the sad reality, given the low number of incoming visitors and the willingness of the locals to travel within the country or abroad.
According to a report by news website news247, that spoke with big travel agencies. expectations for recovery of the sector are low. They do not expected more than 25%-30% of the last year’s volume.
Travel agencies are struggling to “save the season” and hope for “last minute” bookings either in the country or from here to abroad.
“Of those who have booked, 60-65% of travelers have postponed their travels for next year. 15% have completely canceled their trips and there is a 20% who say” I will travel when the airports open because I want to go on holiday, that is, people who have some valuable time to spend to travel” said Lysandros Tsilidis, president of the Federation of Associations of Tourist and Travel Agencies of Greece.
“We believe that with a lot of effort we may be able to approach 15-20% of last year’s arrivals. Those who think we will work in July and August are wrong. With 45 or 60 working days, even if you are full, you have lost the other 3 / 5 of your product.
“There is no way we can get closer to larger sizes because the majority of hotels are closed and we have a big gap with reduced flights. At least two weeks should pass until we seethe first results, the travel agents stressed.
They do not share the government and mainstream media excitement about the incoming flights.
“For example, a plane lands here but we don’t know how many on board. It is the time that students return, Greeks return to their homeland. So we don’t have to celebrate because we see some planes landing,” Tsilidis underlined.
According to Aggelos Lambrou, CEO of one of the biggest travel agencies in the country,, “Manessis Travel “as soon as the states started announcing restriction measures the reservation cancellations reached 100%. Fortunately for Greece, the proper management of the whole situation has made our country a safe destination.”
He said that there is uncertainty due to the course of the pandemic and that travelers have normally 10-15 days to decide if and where they will spend their vacations.
If there are no surprises a rate of 30% can be saved compared to last year’s traffic. “We will call it a success if we reach 20%-20% of the normality, and the drop is limited to -70%,” Lambrou said.
