Greek tourism faces a summer of patience amid stringent Covid-19 restrictions

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Many resort owners in Greece’s seaside resorts were once again witnessing good times in two weeks in July. The uncertainty that had plagued Greek tourism since early 2020 was gradually starting to go away.

Following a catastrophic year for the global tourism scenario, June was promising for Greece. International arrivals went up more than 13-fold that month compared to 2020.

However, August bookings are patchy, and business officers said that it’s too early to predict how the summer season will unfold.

“For the first time in years, a secure forecast for this year’s tourism revenues cannot be made,” said Yannis Retsos, the president of tourism confederation SETE.

“The positive momentum could, at any moment, be overtaken by insecurity, and vice-versa,” Retsos said.
Greece, which depends closely on selling “Covid-free” islands to draw vacationers again, was compelled to enforce a week-long curfew and music ban on Mykonos Island after infections increased this month.

On Rhodes, another standard island, with more than 2.5 million guests in 2019, enterprise house owners are apprehensive that the broader south Aegean area could also be marked “deep red” by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, and that big-spending German vacationers might choose to stay away.

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