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You are here: Home Finance & Business Financial crisis leaves euro with new popularity Greece banks on tourism as crisis stings

21/03/2009Greece banks on tourism as crisis stings

Amid street violence, civil service strikes and the economic crisis, Greece is having trouble soliciting the thousands of tourists its economy usually depends on.

In the grip of a burgeoning economic crisis that has soured global travel forecasts, the last thing tourist-hungry Greece needed was a blockade of the Acropolis, its main archaeological attraction.

But amid an early slump in bookings that alarms the country's key industry, thousands of visitors have been turned away at the gates of this city's ancient citadel because of a protest by culture ministry staff.

Thousands have been prevented in the last fortnight from accessing the iconic temple, which draws crowds over 100,000 people each month, in a protest against layoffs that is set to continue in mid-March.

The timing is unfortunate for Greece, which in December went through weeks of street violence after the fatal shooting of a teenager by police.

At the time, tourism leaders noted that a locked-up Acropolis was more damaging that the mainly anti-police unrest in which no tourists were harmed.

Unpromising trends
Today, the damage from December is hard to assess but the figures coming in are not pleasant, operators say.

"The violence, along with exaggerated media reports, dented Greece's image," says George Drakopoulos, general manager of the association of Greek tourism enterprises (Sete). "But the measure of harm is hard to gauge right now as we lack arrival results over the entire year to compare to last year's.”

AFP PHOTO / Aris Messinis
An empty tourist shuttle bus is parked under the ancient Acropolis hill on 5 March 2009 in Athens. The Acropolis, Greece's top tourist attraction, was shut down by seasonal workers staging a new protest over the non-renewal of their contracts.
Current booking figures are cold comfort, particularly from the British and German markets that traditionally make up most of Greece's foreign arrivals.

"Right now we have 30 percent fewer bookings from Britain and 20 percent from Germany compared to this time last year," says Argyro Fili, head of the Hellenic association of travel and tourist agencies (Hatta).

No precise figures are currently available for the US market but the fall there is believed to be similar, she added.

"The game has switched to late booking,” Fili said. “Everybody is waiting to see what happens. We expect to have a clear picture by early April."

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