In a press conference held at the island of Santorini on Sunday, Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis presented the domestic tourism voucher program for qualifying Greeks, an environment-friendly initiative at Santorini, and the Visit Greece electronic application for mobile platforms, ANA reports.
Organized one day after the Prime Minister’s ‘Greek Summer 2020′ Santorini press conference, Theoharis’ speech focused on the 30-million-euro-strong ‘Tourism For All’ voucher program, which concerns some 250.000 low-income Greek citizens who can enjoy up to a week’s subsidized holiday in many inland destinations.
The program aims to stimulate tourism for the benefit of businesses in the industry, announced the minister, through the subsidized accommodation for a large number of guests, which is expected to boost “the liquidity of tourism companies with additional multiplier benefits for local economies,” he noted. One million stays are expected to be booked via this program.
The ‘Tourism For All’ program will run from July 15 to December 31 and can be applied for through TaxisNet, the government’s online tax registry.
The next initiative of the Tourism Ministry is Visit Greece, the Greek National Tourism Organization’s (GNTO) official application for portable electronic devices, with exclusive sponsorship by Eurobank and Mastercard, said Theoharis.
Key elements of the application are the ability to create a personalized profile which in turn relays personalized push notifications to the user, the automatic detection of the user’s geographical location via satellite (the all-too-familiar geo-location feature), proposals for points of hospitality, catering, attractions, and local businesses.
Perhaps most importantly, another especially useful feature of the Visit Greece app is that it is COVID-19-aware, as the user can be informed about everything that relates to Covid-19 local protective measures and health services, updated accordingly via the geo-location feature. It is also a multilingual application.
Visit Greece is inked to the Mastercard Priceless Cities program that offers travelers exclusive services and functional benefits to tourists and partner businesses, noted the minister.
Referring to the recent coronavirus pandemic and the reopening of tourism, Theoharis pointed out that “nothing has been left to chance as the government’s absolute priority is health safety, because protecting the health and lives of tourists and workers is in our hands.”
“Let’s prove that Greece – while remaining the most attractive tourist destination in the Mediterranean – is also one of the safest countries in the world,” he underlined.
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
