Outrageous announcement in Santorini: Residents are being asked to join a voluntary “lockdown” so that tourists have space to wander around.
In a post on social media and using language similar to emergency sms <112> in case of wildfires, locally elected politician at the Santorini Municipality, Panos Kavalaris, called on residents of the island to “limit their movements” in order to make space for tourists.
According to a post on Facebook, Panos Kavalaris wrote more or less that today is a very difficult day for Santorini, as 17,000 visitors from cruise ships are expected! This situation raised concerns about overcrowding, given the already high occupancy of the island’s accommodation. Residents are asked to stay in their homes so as not to further aggravate the overcrowding situation.”
“Emergency Announcement.
Another difficult day for our city and island with the arrival of 17,000 visitors from cruise ships!!! We ask for your attention and we reduce our movements as much as we can !!!”
The same announcement was posted also at the Local Community Thiras on FB page.
Following an outrage, shortly after 3 p.m. the post was deleted from Panos Kavalaris’ Facebook profile.
Local media santonews.com criticized the call to residents as “The Tourism Servility of the Flagship.”
On social media, Greeks commented ” the elected municipal counselor officially asks locals to lock themselves at home, so that tourists can wander around free. Marvelous.”
Ο εκλεγμένος πρόεδρος της κοινότητας θήρας ζητά επίσημα από τους πολίτες να παραμείνουν στα σπίτια τους για να κυκλοφορούν οι τουρίστες. Αριστούργημα. pic.twitter.com/llRIMpLDzt
— Le Maître 🇺🇦🇵🇸 (@constads) July 23, 2024
Santorini, Mykonos: The first victims of over-tourism
According to media, the islands of Santorini and Mykonos are the first victims of over-tourism in Greece, as the first indicative figures for the course of tourism there do not seem to be encouraging, as arrivals and revenues show a negative sign this year as well.
Market players are looking for the reasons why something like this is happening for the second year in a row. Although some believe that this is a harbinger of a similar course for tourism in Greece, most believe that everything is to blame for the over-tourism that has turned these two islands into places that are difficult for anyone to enjoy, from the moment they step out of the super-luxurious hotels where they reside.
Over-tourism also concerns the government and, as the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has recently stated, a kind of brake will be put on the arrival of cruise ships.
It is characteristic that in the last years the inseparability was created by those who got off the ships in question just for a ride, without staying on the island and without spending.
Figures so far show negative rates of 20% and 13% for Mykonos and Santorini respectively, according to industry players.
Based on this data, market players emphasize the need to shift to more sustainable solutions.
According to surveys, May limited losses to 0.43% compared to last year. June and July are down 10.4% and 13% respectively, August is down 9.74% and September is down 10.25%, daily ethnos.gr reported on Tuesday.
Residents of Athens unhappy to see tourists outside their doors
Meanwhile, residents in Athens appear also disturbed by the crowds of tourists flooding non-stop in summer months residential areas of the Greek capital.
There are already complaints on small websites, blogs and social media where locals feel uncomfortable about stepping out their homes to get confronted by foreign visitors in their own neighborhood.
A post on X (Twitter) claimed that a tourist got angry about a woman walking her dog in her neighborhood and told her to go away because dogs are dirty and he wanted to enjoy his coffee.
The claim seems hardly to believe to be true, however, on social media times, where everyone can claim what he/she wants without feeling obliged to submit evidence or proof, such claim could be the beginning of a wave against tourists.
Earlier today I was speaking with a friend, a loyal ND supporter, who expressed concern that soon Greeks could start spraying tourists with water and telling them to go away, just as it recently happened in Spain.
PS In fact, locals in highly touristic areas could move to other regions during the summer months, work are veggies & fruit pickers, a doctors in public hospitals where there is shortage. But the conservative government would never come up with such a solution to the problems troubling the country, right!?
STOP! Now it is going to far! I am a turist myself but I am a visitor in your beautiful country and I really dont want to interrupt your ordinary life. On the contrary, I want to see and be a little “part” of it while I am visiting you. This is dangerous, the greek (local?) gouvernment has to limit the amount of visitors, otherwise there will be (and already are?) greek people that wiil see us turists as “enemies” not friends! Pure economy cant rule this, there have to be limits!!!
I totally agree.
🤣🤣🤣🤣
We need tourism but it’s been allowed to go way too far – this madness needs to stop. The famous Greek ‘filoxenia’ has been tested too it’s limits and beyond. Tourism has to be sustainable to continue. There definately should be limits imposed otherwise even the tourists cannot enjoy this beautiful country. Do we really want to turn it into another Mallorca?
I live in Spain’s Canary Islands. I work in a non-tourism involved industry, and have very much made it my home. Being Venezuelan, it was easy to adapt to the climate , language, and culture. For the past couple of years, the price of everything, especially housing, has increased drastically compared to the rest of Spain in terms of scale, and it so happens that the number of tourists received each year been record-breaking since the pandemic restrictions were eased. So much so that we had a massive multi-city protest last April demanding more to be done to limit tourists and non-residents from buying more and more (especially housing) and leaving less and less for locals and residents. I can’t imagine how unhinged the local population would’ve reacted if such a public message was sent out to them to allow for tourists to roam more freely. This stuff is happening everywhere that’s trendy for tourism, and people need to rise up against their governments from selling so much of their land and livelihoods to tourists.
the same situation in naxos. 20 thousand of us, and 100 thousand tourists. they doubled water rates to pay for the bottomless pit of mass tourism, even when for locals, there are fines for watering a garden or washing your car – but the hotels water lawns and fill swimming pools, and a hundred thousand tourists flush toilets and take multiple showers per day. rental cars and tourist/hotel shuttles are allowed to park near the port but citizens are not. walking paths for tourists are cleaned while actual streets in our village collapse and not only does the municipality refuse to repair them, they also explicitly forbade villagers from repairing the damage ourselves! hundreds of thousands spent on desalination for tourists, but our village’s sewer system (built 50 years ago by personal labor contributions from the villagers, not by a government contract) is now in need of repairs and has several known leaks – a health hazard – but the municipality , again, has been repeatedly informed of this over a _decade_ and refuses to fix anything… and likewise has explicitly forbidden us from repairing the problems ourselves. everything for the magical tourist dollar, but the citizens just get s**t on.
We cannot blame tourists for visiting places we live – and maybe love. We could, however, be more involved in tourism planning. No minister of tourism announces “we want less tourism this year.” But there must be a balance of their vague terminology “carrying capacity.” If our city/town cannot manage more than X# of tourists, then solutions need to be discussed WITH the residents at the table. As for cruise ship visitors that leave only a few Euros during their stopover (and a lot of trash), there needs to be a tax on the cruise industry that transparently goes directly to the local economy – to be invested in all the things needed to reside in a clean, well-maintained and safe town. This is not a new idea, of course, but one that needs to be a REAL collaboration between the public sector and their citizens continuously – not just biz owners. If not, citizens will be driven out by the inflated high cost of living and unbearably congested town. …and there will be nothing left of “local life” for residents or tourists to enjoy.