SANTORINI – One of the world’s most popular islands, Santorini continues to be overrun with hordes of tourists making even walking difficult without bumping into someone, and residents unhappy when cruise ships unloaded 11,000 in one day.

The infrastructure is being strained to the breaking point, with some 2 million tourists annually on an island with a year round population of less than 16,000, water resources being tested too.

The cliffside areas of Oia and Fira are filled with expensive boutique hotels with swimming pools and it attracts most of the tourists jammed into narrow alleys and jockeying for a view of the sunset, shooting out shots on social media.

Ironically, residents and businesses in 2020 were clamoring for tourists when the COVID-19 pandemic struck and almost shut down international air traffic but now there’s so many arrivals it’s brought a blowback about overtourism.

Panagiotis Kavallaris, President of the Thira municipal community – the other name for the island – posted and then deleted a social media post advising residents to limit their movements due to the surge in tourist traffic.

That drew criticism he was telling residents to make room for tourists whose money is a bonus for the island but a meeting was quickly convened of ministry officials, Mayor Nikos Zorzos and Cyclades Members of Parliament.

Zorzos told Kathimerini that the number of cruise passengers disembarking on the island should not exceed 8,000 per day. “Starting in 2025, we will reinstate this cap to preserve our island as a unique destination,” Zorzos said.

There had been limitations on how many cruise ships could dock but he said it was too late to restrict them this year because they had already been booked, although he said the number of peak days was cut from 63 in 2023 to 48 this year.

He said that regulating cruise ships wouldn’t be a problem if more measures were put in place, including building a new port, improvements to energy infrastructure and urban planning, and better regulation of hotels and Airbnbs.

The British daily tabloid The Mirror said that Cruisecritic, a Tripadvisor company, reports that up to seven cruise ships can dock simultaneously on the island, potentially bringing over 14,000 passengers if at full capacity.

The report said one tourist likened navigating the narrow lanes of Oia village in Santorini to Dante’s Circles of Hell, with a “woodcut of Dante’s Circles of Hell with the condemned souls shoulder to shoulder as they funnel down to the bottom.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/travel/europe/chaos-greek-paradise-island-11000-33325233

Earlier this month, UK tourists criticized “Europe’s most beautiful island,” as being destroyed by too many arrivals, especially “the knockoffs and the Americans and the selfie-stick flailers.”

One tourist said: “No amount of sunsets or white walls or blue domes will ever make Santorini worth the money,” and another who visited in the early 1980s – saying it was then “unspoiled,” lamented what it looks like now.

“Sadly all this is long gone. Now it is a tourist trap,” they continued. “Today cruise liners dump thousands onto the island every day … all ripe for scamming,” the unnamed person said of what’s been lost.