Greek main opposition New Democracy Tourism Sector head Dodecanese MP Manos Konsolas made the assessment that the picture of tourist arrivals in Greece is not accurate and provided all relevant data while addressing the Parliament.
Mr. Konsolas stessed that “the Bank of Greece rightly announced its data on foreign arrivals posing the question of how many of those represent actual foreign tourists who chose Greece as their destination, since a large portion of them are Greeks who have emigrated abroad and come to spend a few days at home with their own people. Another large portion are citizens of neighboring countries who come for one-day or intra-day visit to Greece.”
“Are we going to consider all of them tourists inflating the total number of visitors just to pretend that we have an increase in tourist arrivals, at the same time that travel receipts, i.e. touristrevenues are in decline?” Mr. Konsolas wondered.
As the New Democracy Tourism Sector chief revealed, according to the data for 2015, arrivals from Skopje amounted to three million.
“Are these tourists? Is it possible that Skopje (FYROM) is our main tourist market? Of course not. These are intraday visitors who come only for a few hours to Greece and, yet, they are recorded in arrivals, “said Mr. Konsolas.
And Mr. Konsolas concluded by saying:
“It is obvious that we are lacking a trustworthy processing of data regarding tourist arrivals in order to have a complete picture and dependable data, which will allow us to shape tourism policy. From this point we must start to plan and agree that our tourism needs a strong, reliable and specialized think tank, which must possess the organizational infrastructure of a Research Institute. We must leave behind the notion of a false and artificial inflation of visitors numbers and get a genuine assessment. “
Referring to the Tourism Ministry’s draft law on the ratification of the Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the field of tourism between Greece and Egypt, he stressed that “this kind of intergovernmental agreements should be accompanied by concrete actions. One of these is to strengthen tourism education and training that can help to attract foreign students.”
After the Minister’s answer, Mr. Konsolas took the floor and made specific remarks on the state of the tourism industry and the competitiveness of the Greek tourism product, referring to the increased tax rates that have burdened the entrepreneurs in the tourism industry. Moreover, he stressed that the government’s handling of the refugee crisis has contributed to the destabilization of tourism, especially in the islands that bear the main brunt.
Finally, he referred to his proposal for a meeting of the Committee of Cultural Affairs and Production and Trade Committee with the participation of relevant ministries and agencies to discuss issues of tourism education and training, which has not yet been realized.
RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
