Greece all set to take tourism investment to greater heights
Published on : Thursday, March 8, 2018
Yiannis Retsos, the newly elected President of SETE believes that lack of investment in Greek tourism is what’s holding back the sector. In 2016, voted as European Union’s sixth-most visited destination, Restos considers that the country, based on Eurostat figures in terms of nights spent by travelers, have the opportunity to take the industry to an altogether new height if additional resources are poured into it and side by side if the state takes initiation to remove barriers that obstructed fresh investment to make its way. To quote Retsos, “while having almost 30 million tourists from May to September is a huge number, it could reach 40 million in a nine-month period if the tourism season were extended. The bet now is to enrich the tourism product and have added value that will attract not necessarily more, but richer tourists, so we can have more receipts.”
Tourism is one of the most lucrative sectors of Greece with arrivals increasing to 10 percent last year from the previous year to 27.2 million and churning out revenue of over 14.5 billion euros ($18 billion), as per the date presented by the Bank of Greece. In 2016, travel and tourism contributed 32.8 billion euros to the output of Greek economy, accounting 18.6 percent of Greek’s GDP that year, as per the World Travel & Tourism Council. The London-based body anticipates that figures to increase to 23.8 percent of Greek output in 2027.
By 2021, with an intention to grow arrivals to 36 million and revenues to 20 billion, Greece requires investments of value 6 billion euros a year, Retsos highlighted. “While this is a large number, there is foreign interest to invest,” he said, also calling for public investments.
As per Restos, investors are keen on current tourist units as well as empty buildings. “There are many publicly owned buildings that could be used for tourism purposes such as in Athens where pension funds own properties that are empty and where there are plans to exploit them,” he said.
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