{"id":6734,"date":"2026-05-21T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=6734"},"modified":"2026-05-21T16:03:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T13:03:00","slug":"kefalogianni-our-tourism-is-not-directly-affected-by-the-war-2026-started-dynamically","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/?p=6734","title":{"rendered":"Kefalogianni: Our tourism is not directly affected by the war – 2026 started dynamically"},"content":{"rendered":"

“In the case of Greece, the immediate impact is not something that we are either worried about or see developing<\/b>,” Minister of Tourism Olga Kefalogianni said, speaking on ERTnews Radio 105.8. <\/strong><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

“It is the indirect effect of the war that is causing a concern<\/strong>, in the sense that because of the particular region in which the situation is unfolding we are seeing an increase in fuel prices<\/strong> which is also affecting aviation fuel<\/strong>. If you saw last week, the European Commissioner for Transport and Tourism, Mr. Tzitzikostas<\/b>, who from the beginning was very reassuring about the adequacy of fuel, if you saw, he said that we may see a fairly large increase in prices,” Kefalogianni continued.<\/p>\n

Noting that the ministry has no such data to confirm the 30% increase that Mr. Tzitzikostas, however, he pointed out that “we have been monitoring with the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels since the beginning of the war on a weekly basis, is the bookings and cancellations that our country may have.<\/strong> And there is the part where we saw that there is no reason for concern, in the sense that we were stable. We have a very large balance<\/strong>, unlike some other competitive destinations<\/strong> that we have seen since the beginning of the war have had a very large drop in bookings and a very large increase in cancellations. (…)<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I must tell you that Cyprus is one of those countries that has been affected.<\/strong> I say unfortunately, because you understand, for Greece, Cyprus has a special importance, to always be supported from all points of view, but we see other countries that have been affected, such as Turkey<\/strong>, for example.<\/p>\n

So Greece was not within the radius of those countries that seem to be affected in terms of the sense of security<\/strong>, but, again, the indirect pressures that the rest of the European markets are under, to see the reverse side, because as you understand, the price increase is affecting potential visitors.<\/p>\n

This is why we are currently working with the Greek National Tourism Organization (EOT), with which we always do the cooperation programs with the major foreign tourism companies, tour operators, airlines, so that we can strengthen our programs for Greece this year<\/strong>,” the minister said.<\/p>\n

“In this direction, it is important that we see that now the current is moving towards what we call last minute, that is, last minute bookings<\/b>. So, whereas in the past we saw that someone may have booked now for August, we are now seeing that the closer the holiday time comes, the closer they will book,” he added.<\/p>\n

Returning to recent years’ tourism figures for the country, he noted that “we are coming off three consecutive record years in tourism, and that has its significance.”<\/p>\n

“We broke the record in ’23 in ’24 and in ’25 we had our best year ever, both in terms of arrivals but especially in terms of revenue<\/strong>. And this is of particular importance because it was the first time we saw a higher percentage increase in revenues from arrivals, 10% increase in revenues, 23.6 billion euros for the Greek economy<\/strong> and a very large, of course, stimulating economic injection to local communities.<\/p>\n

2026 was starting with really, very, very positive messages<\/b>.<\/em> We had already been to the big exhibition in London at the end of the year and we saw that Greece was not only a top tourist destination now in the top ten most popular in the world, but also with a very big momentum for ’26. As you know, tourism is influenced by exogenous factors and has this capacity to have to adjust to new circumstances<\/b>. A geopolitical development in our region, such as the one we have, a war, of course, affects either directly some destinations or indirectly,” Kefalogianni said.<\/p>\n

Asked what the picture is this year in terms of the labour shortages that tourism-related businesses have been facing in recent years, she said Mrs. Kefalogianni “as tourism grows, it expands, because let’s not forget that we no longer have a two and three-month tourist season, we have a very large increase in the winter months, the lateral months<\/b>. We have many destinations that stay open until 15 November. So I want to say that the market now needs a lot more workers and that is a positive thing.<\/p>\n

The positive thing is that tourism has never been left unprotected<\/strong>. Even in the worst years of the economic crisis, tourism has always had a contract of employment.<\/strong> Workers have never been left unprotected with all the moves that have been made in recent years and with the digital job card, I think all conditions in tourism are slowly improving. Obviously, when you have now reached the top 10 of the most popular countries globally, yes, because tourism is based on the human factor, you have to put a lot of emphasis on human resources. So we at the Ministry of Tourism<\/strong>, as far as we are concerned, are making a very big effort to upgrade tourism education and training.<\/strong> We have completed a programme from the Greek society for 18,000 workers, which went very well and we are continuing with these programmes and also with the programmes to upgrade the tourism schools that we have at the Ministry of Tourism.”<\/p>\n

On the issue of over-tourism, which was preceded by a confrontation between Douca and the minister over the historic centre of Athens, warning of the risk of it turning into Barcelona<\/strong>, Kefalogianni said:<\/p>\n

“The number one thing I want to remind you about Athens is that 15 years ago it was not even a tourist destination. Because there is a very big effort so that Athens becomes a destination in its own right, let’s not forget that tourism is what has helped Athens and many of its areas to be upgraded, revitalized<\/b>, building stock to be reused to be converted into tourist accommodation legally operating. So, let’s not forget that tourism has helped a lot and tourism has helped a lot in keeping the city vibrant, keeping the food and beverage industry functioning, keeping the commerce functioning, and that’s where we’re very interested in making even more connections.<\/p>\n

Don’t compare disparate things. There is no comparison between Barcelona and Athens. It is totally inappropriate and very superficial to make these kinds of comparisons<\/strong>. Yes, talk about how to strengthen more areas that need it most andconstrain areas that are already seeing too much pressure. That’s why the government has taken action on short-term rentals and has banned new short-term rentals in downtown Athens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

But all of this, you know, needs partnerships. So it should be shown that we are all on the same page, that we all seek to have a tourist flow in Athens,<\/strong>but at the same time what matters most is that Athens is pleasant in its daily life, first of all for all of us who live and operate in Athens.”<\/p>\n

About the new zoning framework<\/b> and the criticism levelled at it, that big investors are strengthened and small ones are left out, Ms. Kefalogianni<\/b> noted that there have indeed been various comments and remarks, but the general direction is that “first of all, it is extremely important that there will be, because it will be signed by the end of June, we are still in the process of receiving some comments<\/b>, it will have to go through some other procedures by the Central Planning Council to sign the Joint Ministerial Decision with the Minister responsible, Mr. Papastavrou, Environment and Energy”.<\/p>\n

“This spatial plan has come to set rules, principles, guidelines at last for a balanced development<\/strong>. We are interested in moderation, we are interested in protecting the environment<\/strong> and of course we are interested and that is why you will see that we have singled out in the country those areas which are already very developed, those areas which we need to strengthen for their development and areas which are not developed at all and we need to encourage investment there as well. We have really tried to incorporate both comments made during the public consultation and, of course, to draw on the in-depth study that has been done by experts.<\/p>\n

So I want to say that this is a work that starts with the scientific study and continues with the comments that have been made by agencies, by regions, by municipalities in the public consultation and finally, that the Special Spatial Framework for Tourism provides the principles and guidelines for the underlying planning<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So, we get down to the local level and there now, you know, it is also the local communities at the local government level that will have to decide what kind of development they want. We are interested in having tourism development<\/strong>, but at the same time we want to ensure that this development is environmentally and socially sustainable,” the Minister concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In the case of Greece, the immediate impact is not something that we were worried about or that we see developing,” the minister said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.tomanifesto.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}