Reverse countdown for beginning of Greece’s tourism season; kudos by FT

A reverse countdown has begun for the official opening of the all-important tourism season in Greece, with hotels and other holiday-related businesses set to open their doors on May 14, although the first charter flights landed on the eastern Aegean island of Kos over the weekend.

At a very preliminary first glance, tourism sector analysts forecast that “last-minute”, if not “last second” reservations will dominate the post-Covid season.

One reason, according to reports, is that many would-be holiday-makers are waiting to see how the vaccination process proceeds.

“Based on the most recent figures, achieving a target of 50 percent of revenues of 2019, which recorded 33 million and 18.2 billion euros in travel remittances, which we forecast a few months ago, is possibly a very ambitious target,” Yannis Retsos, the head of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises (SETE), underlined.

He added that expectations for tourism revenues for 2021 will hover at lower levels, with a truer picture to emerge in late July.

Meanwhile, in a rare instance of outright kudos from FT for Greece, the international financial newspaper applauds the Greek government’s actions for a restart of the tourism sector.

According to FT, residents from the UK, US, Israel, Serbia, UAE and elsewhere in the EU can now begin travelling to Greece, under the condition that they have a negative Covid-19 test result over the past 72 hours or a certificate for a full vaccination for the virus.

Financial Times also lauds the Greek government’s decision to give precedence to wage-earners employed in the hospitality and F&B for vaccination.

Finally, the campaign to vaccinate all residents in islands of under 1,000 inhabitants is praised.