|
|
| Previously neglected by foreign
skiers, Greece is starting to attract more visitors
in search of unique slopes. |
|
|
By Dimitris
Yannopoulos
The decline of mass tourism in Greece
over the past four years has highlighted the necessity
of developing and promoting high-quality, alternative
or "special" forms of tourism. This form
of diversification of the tourist "product"
is the only way to overcome the country’s seasonal
dependency on the summer months, preferred by the
majority of its 13 million visitors despite mild
weather prevailing for 8-10 months of the year.
Also, the exclusive reliance on holiday
package-tours has priced eurozone-member Greece
out of the low end of the tourist market where competition
from "cheaper" regional rivals in the
Balkans, the Adriatic, the Aegean or the southeastern
Mediterranean has intensified during the last decade.
In the past couple of years, Greece has been the
only one of the major eurozone tourist destinations
that has not improved its turnover.
"It is inexcusable for a country
like ours with an exceptional climate, a rich culture
and varied island scenery to have a tourism period
of four or five months," says Tourism Minister
Dimitris Avramopoulos. "Our goal is for Greece
to be a year-round destination. We can achieve this
by attracting high-income tourists who can afford
more than the sea-sun-sights combination, and we
can offer that."
Avramopoulos and other senior officials
or businessmen in the tourist industry believe that
a largely untapped potential for development exists
in integrated resort complexes, combining health
tourism (thalassotherapy, spas, beauty parlors,
rehabilitation facilities) convention centers, marinas,
residential tourism (real-estate sales or leases,
including group retirement schemes), casinos or
golf courses. These are the special forms of tourism
on which seasonality, hard currency or economic
cycles have no effect.
With the exception of luxury resorts,
where thalassotherapy and spas or other forms of
health and beauty care are optional parts of the
broader hospitality package, Greece has not yet
ventured into the lucrative field of health resorts.
In Switzerland and Spain, this is a blooming branch
of year-round tourism.
Thousands of hotel beds in Spain’s
Costa Del Sol are leased or sold as integrated "health
villages" to German and Japanese insurance
funds for the treatment of their patients or as
retirement residences. These cost much less to the
funds than the equivalent services offered at home.
The same potential for large-scale
investment exists in the field of eco-tourism with
the Greek mainland and islands blessed with countless
biodiversity habitats in settings of unparalleled
beauty and also a few universal rarities, like the
Fossilized Forest on the island of Lesbos and the
gum-mastic grove on neighboring Chios island.
"There is no question that alternative,
high-end tourism could have solved the problems
of Greek tourism if a strategy for its development
had been adopted before the crisis in the sector
broke out in 2001," says investment consultant
Aris Ikkos, director of JBR Hellas Ltd. "But
now Greece has to cover a lot of ground in the field
of new tourist ventures that its regional competitors
are already treading."
Thanks to the 2004 Olympic Games,
Greece has now acquired know-how as well as the
facilities for venturing into the daunting challenges
of alternative tourism on a grand scale. A case
in point is the all-round "refurbishment"
of Athens ahead of the Games which has turned the
capital into "a whole new product" in
the parlance of the global tourist market.
"The new airport, the metro,
the Attika highway, the tram, the pedestrian walkways
connecting commercial centers and antiquities in
the old centre around the Acropolis, the expanded
marinas on the southern coastline, not to mention
a series of readily adaptable stadiums, are all
giving Athens the unique, fresh and modern metropolitan
identity which it lacked in the past," says
the president of the Attika Hotel Association, George
Tsakiris. "But most important of all, we now
have the best hotel product in Europe. I’m
not saying other cities don’t have wonderful
hotels, but that we have the best quality overall.
So many hotels have been renovated for the Olympics
- 200 in the past four years, in all categories
- and no other European city can compete with that."
In a rare instance of corporate solidarity,
all the major business bodies of Greek tourism joined
hands at the start of 2004 to set up the Athens
Convention Bureau, the first non-governmental agency
for showcasing Athens and other Greek cities and
islands for the conference, incentive and exhibitions
markets. "We had only been operating for a
month and, judging by the numerous and varied inspections
we’ve hosted, we can say Athens is experiencing
growing demand from the business sector for conferences
(of 400 - 2000 delegates)," says Bureau director
Kali Travlos.
The positive feedback arises from
Athens’ state-of-the-art conference facilities
and infrastructure that now match the highest level
of corporate requirements in Europe. For instance,
the new wing of The Megaron Concert Hall houses
one of the most sophisticated convention centers
in Europe. Taking up to 1700 delegates with ease
- and ample floor space for exhibitions, corporate
events, workshop and break-out rooms - the Megaron
Convention Centre is a world-class business venue.
A number of five-star and luxury refurbished hotels
- each with in-house convention facilities of their
own - are between 5-10 minutes away from the Megaron.
Despite the mild Greek weather, there
are more than 20 full-fledged skiing centers scattered
on mountainous areas of the mainland, especially
in the northern provinces of Macedonia and Epirus,
as well as in central Greece (Mt Parnassus) and
the Peloponnese region further south. But all these
centers cater almost exclusively for the domestic
winter holiday market which remains small, fragmented
and lacking in the "Alpine" air of winter
luxury that could give them a year-round appeal
even when the snow has melted.
As in other forms of special tourism,
however, the existing skiing centers offer considerable
potential for expansion.
This outlook would be more lucrative
if the country’s picturesque winter hotels
acquire an "extrovert" orientation with
appropriate investments, joint-ventures and cooperation
with foreign winter tour operators. Above all, diversification
within large-scale resorts (combining long-term
residential facilities with bundles of special tourism
services) holds the key to the recovery of Greece’s
biggest and most competitive industry.
|
Greece 
