ATHENS — "Crete has always been one of the flagships of Greek tourism and in the unprecedented crisis of the coronavirus, it managed to keep its reputation at a high level and to offer high quality services to the tourists who visited it last summer," Greek Νational Tourism Organisation (GNTO) secretary general Dimitris Fragakis said in an interview with the Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) released on Sunday.

Fragakis underlined that this summer will be much better than the previous one, adding that the country has more weapons for a safe opening of tourism.

Crete remains one of the strongest "brands", Fraggakis said and estimated that the course of vaccinations and the timely adoption of stable rules for the opening of tourism will lead to an increase in bookings.

According to the president of the Rethymnon Hoteliers Association, Manolis Tsakalakis, June is the key month to achieve the goal of 40 pct of arrivals in 2019, which translates to about 2 million arrivals in 2021.