ATHENS – “Tourism is a concern of the many, not the few. I will defend it and we will defend it with all the power of our voice, our strengths, our political decisions and acts of legislation,” Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias underlined in Parliament. The minister was speaking during a debate on a tourism bill that was voted into law late on Monday.

Kikilias described the bill as developmental, and one which strategically supports the tourism product and responds to the needs of the tourism industry, offering contemporary tools for tourism development in all regions of the country.

“The bill brings a strategy that extends a network of tourism development tools to all regions. Being the number five tourism brand in the world is a huge asset for us. We will protect it [fiercely], with initiatives that will further strengthen the tourism brands we have. We have to showcase all the regions and municipalities of the country, which have areas of unparalleled beauty,” Kikilias pointed out, adding that “we have 320 million euros from the [Recovery and Resilience Fund (RRF)], precisely for these tools: ports, marinas, ski resorts, spas, accessibility for the disabled, digitisation of tourism,” the minister said.

“There is a lot of hard work hidden behind this bill… It is a national and supra-local effort. It settles the issue of thermal springs and the issue of the Zakynthos shipwreck and comes to provide tools, such as the Destination Management Organisations (DMOs), as well as a series of provisions on various tourism issues, which had been stagnant for a long time and remained lagging,” noted Kikilias.