The significant increase of tourism since the start of the year creates a sense of optimism in the sector and the overall progress of the economy, since its contribution to the GDP and employment is decisive. This development cannot lead to complacency. Unfortunately for many years, a wrong policy and the expectation of easy money undermined the country’s main source of wealth. We lost credibility, were unable to keep high service standards and turned away the high-income tourists who made the difference.
Over the past two years tourism in Greece has grown significantly, giving us a unique opportunity to cover lost ground. The rapid increase of tourist arrival is an important development, but it is not enough. We are still have a rather low expenditure per capita average and one of the shortest tourist seasons, despite favorable weather conditions.
It is up to the State and primarily the people in involved in tourism to increase tourist arrivals and income. All it needs is to invest in the development of our infrastructure and services. If we focus on quick profit, if we go back to our old profiteering habits when tourism is at all-time high, then we will miss the train once again.
It is absurd, for example, for revenue to not increase proportionately to tourist arrivals simply because some businesses opt to hoard their profits abroad; just like we cannot expect a high and steady quality of services when some of them prefer to hire unskilled, or rather worse, casual employees.
For tourism to truly become Greece’s heavy industry, like everyone proclaims, we need a plan, organization, efficiency and a long-term effort. Quite a few have understood this and are truly working towards this. All it needs though is a handful to subvert any of these efforts. It is high time we learned from our mistakes and avoided making them again, and turn this painful crisis we are experiencing into a great opportunity for tourism.
TO VIMA
