SANTORINI – Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic that curtailed international travel had residents and businesses on a near-empty Santorini begging for tourists to come, so many have arrived they’re now praying they’ll go away.

The island of about 16,000 residents could see 3.4 million arrivals in 2024 as Greece is on a path to bust records set in 2024 when more than 31 million people came, but the numbers are straining the infrastructure and driving up rents prohibitively.

Santorini is the most extreme case as it’s a lure for its magical sunsets, couples getting married and on their honeymoons wanting an exotic setting and because it’s a favorite of the social media crowd on Instagram and TikTok.

But it means there’s so many people concentrated at the arrival port under the famed cliffside spots of Fira and Oia that give breathtaking views of the sea and the sunken caldera volcano just offshore that it’s overwhelmed to the breaking point.

The problem has been exacerbated by cruise ships arriving that had been limited but kept coming, with a cap being pushed for 2025 similar to the threshold set for the famed Acropolis that had seen people scurrying across like ants.

CNN – the latest international media to feature Santorini – noted that on one day recently more than 17,000 people poured off cruise ships and tried to find elbow room among the throngs on the cliffside.

It’s even earned the nickname “Instagram Island” because of its perfectly saturated “no filter” splendor. The narrow cobbled streets and cliffside balconies are filled cheek to jowl with vacationers seeking sunset selfies, and locals are disturbed as they go about their daily business,” the news site said.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/santorini-greece-overtourism-cruise-visitor-cap/index.html

Oddly, after the sun sets and people have their meals, the traffic dissipates dramatically. “When evening comes, however, the crowds melt away, and some complain the island goes from Times Square to ghost town,” the report said.

Mayor Nikos Zorzos, who has limited authority, wants the number of cruise ship visitors in 2025 capped at 8,000 a day, as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis earlier told the Bloomberg financial news agency would be done.

COME, GO, COME, GO

That clashes with the government’s goal of attracting as many tourists as possible because they are the biggest revenue generators and in 2023 spent more than 20 billion euros ($21.83 billion) to further propel an economic comeback.

But residents and even some businesses on the island said they’ve had enough of the crowds in the summer with other popular areas in Greece also crushed by arrivals, although there haven’t been the kind of protests seen in Spain and elsewhere.

“Overtourism doesn’t exist. What I see is a lack of structures,” Gianluca Chimenti, a local tour operator and a Santorini resident for 18 years, told CNN Travel. While social media is filled with images of the severe overcrowding in the island’s hot spots at peak times, he said the picture the rest of the time is very different.

“The truth is that the island is empty. Right now is like never before, it’s the worst season ever,” he said, locals and businesses needing to put up with the summer hassle, into the early autumn, because the rest of the year there’s mostly residents.

The site noted the explosion of visitors this century as social media allowed instant transmission of photos and videos and influencers being as important as major media or movies in attracting people to countries.

“Now the island’s outdated infrastructure is under severe pressure, with the main port at Fira under particular strain.Unless they want a long and very steep walk, the cable car is the only option for cruise ship passengers to get from the Old Port to the city center said Chementi, who added: “It’s absolutely normal that you’re going to have a line if the cruise ships are coming all together.”

But he said that when the high season ends, “The hotels right now are more or less under 30 percent of a normal season,” and that businesses feel the shortfall and have to live off summer earnings in some cases.

he claims, and says that other businesses on the island are taking a similar hit.

“The problem is that the social media are showing something completely different from what is the reality,” he said, with ironic indications that the social media displays are making people think twice about coming.

MAGIC IN THE AIR

Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a global trade body, said it had met with the Minister of Maritime Affairs Christos Stylianides, to discuss the crisis, including improvement and upgrade of port infrastructure and services.

“The growth of tourism in Greece has garnered significant attention, particularly concerning the islands of Santorini and Mykonos,” CLIA’s Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean Maria Deligianni told the site.

She confirmed its cruise lines’ commitment to upholding the 8,000-passenger visitor cap and said that there was strong interest in diversifying Greek itineraries to take pressure off the most popular spots, the report added.

Currently, nearly two-thirds of cruise tourism in Greece takes place in the country’s major port of Piraeus – with people heading straight to the Acropolis and other Athens site – Santorini and Mykonos, CLIA said.

“Santorini has one of the most important archaeological sites right now in Europe,” said Chimenti. “Why are cruise ships not organizing tours to the archaeological sites? If you split the people in three parts of the island, so at different times they are doing multiple things,” then he said, “they have time to enjoy and you will never have crowds in any part of the island.”

Despite knowing they will be cheek by jowl with the masses of other tourists, they keep coming for the cliffside, the sunset, the vibes and to take those photos and videos that go out in a flash around the world.

Katie Haslam of England spent her honeymoon on the island in July with her husband Rob but she said they planned to make sure they weren’t swallowed up by all the others who would be around them.

“We didn’t want to go to Fira because we’d read that it was really, really busy,” she said. Instead they chose a clifftop village just a few kilometers from the capital, and “it was just amazing, lovely and quiet.”

On the one day they walked into Fira, “I think there were about eight cruise ships that came in, thousands and thousands of people, so we just stayed away. We saw at least two weddings every day. One of the days, there was six weddings on.”

And as the sun began setting and people jostled for position to try to take photo that showed only them and not the thousands surrounding them, she said she and her husband “sat on our balcony every night at 8 o’clock with a bottle of wine. It was absolutely magical.