- By Christina Kousounis
Despite record-breaking arrivals, the 2025 tourist season revealed the weakest point of the Greek catering industry: consumers, Greeks and foreigners, turned their backs on restaurants and turned to cheaper options, from supermarkets and bakeries to take-away drinks. The result? Reduced turnover, pressure on businesses and intense concern about the future of the sector.
This summer brought to the surface a new reality for the Greek catering industry. Despite the high number of visitors, consumption was significantly reduced, with travelers preferring lower-cost meals and utilizing the kitchens of their accommodations instead of going out to eat. This picture was also reflected in ELSTAT data, which show a 4.75% drop in turnover in the sector in the first half of 2025 compared to last year.
The shift in demand towards the “shelf” and the “home” is attributed to many factors: high prices in cafes and restaurants in popular destinations, the rise in the cost of living, but also the mentality of a new tourism model that puts the economy above the experience. A significant part of visitors buy ready-made meals or food from supermarkets and bakeries, while the shelves of wineries and take-away stores are gaining more and more customers.
As Tasos Giatras, President of the Association of Catering and Leisure Shopkeepers of Achaia Prefecture (SKEANA), points out to Tornos News, “this year’s season acted as a warning bell. For years we have been complacent with record arrivals, ignoring the essence: the quality of the experience. Today we see the consequences – reduced consumption, increased operating costs and services that often do not meet expectations”. He emphasizes that the lack of qualified personnel has worsened in the last two years, as a result of which many stores are working with limited capacity and lower quality.
Comparisons with neighboring countries, Mr. Giatras adds, highlight Greece’s structural disadvantages: higher labor costs, less competitive VAT rates, but also the absence of central planning for the tourism product. “It is not possible for catering not to even be under the Ministry of Tourism, when it is a key part of the visitor’s experience”, he notes characteristically.
Despite the difficulties, large retail chains continue to record upward trends, especially on the islands where tourists are looking for more affordable solutions. Thus, while the supermarket remains the “protagonist” of consumption, small and medium-sized catering businesses are struggling to survive in an environment without strategic planning.
This year’s picture, as entrepreneurs in the field admit, shows that if there are no brave interventions, from upgrading employee education to rationalizing taxation, Greece will continue to count arrivals, but it will lose in what really counts, the value and quality of the tourist experience.
