ATHENS – Caught between wanting their money but limiting the effect it has on infrastructure and the character of islands especially, Greece is said to be readying a plan to have both and avoiding the near-ruin of Santorini to overtourism.

A package of measures is expected to be announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) to walk the line between luring more tourists and diverting them to lesser visited areas.

Other parts of the plan reportedly include improving competition between hotels and short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb siphoning off customers but drying up apartments and homes and spiking rents and home prices.

So many tourists are going to the same spots such as Santorini, as well as Mykonos, Rhodes and Corfu that water supplies are being stretched beyond capacity and locals and teachers and doctors posted to islands can’t find accommodations.

The island of Sifnos, for example, wants to limit swimming pools although critics said people in villages use far more water for their gardens that’s being metered or charged or controlled to have curbs.

Also likely are limits on how many passengers can disembark from cruise ships and raising a fee up to as much as 10 euros, which Santorini Mayor Nikos Zorzos said he would support only if the municipality gets the money.

This summer as many as 17,000 passengers in one day came off cruise ships jockeying to queue up on one of the world’s most popular Instagrammable and TikTok photo and video sites, especially to watch the sunset.

Also said to be discussed is a plan by the Central Union of Municipalities of Greece’s (KEDE) to raise the guest tax, which is now levied on hotel turnover, from 0.5 percent to 2 percent, although that might not deter people from coming.

Government sources not named told Kathimerini that, “The explosive growth of tourism requires the implementation of rules to protect the final product, the preservation of the character of sensitive areas and the return of multiple benefits for local communities.”

The planned measures, these sources said, “are of a regulatory nature, with the aim of achieving a tourism development that improves the quality of the product provided and raises revenue, while reducing the side effects to the environment and the quality of life of permanent residents.”

In a review of what’s gone wrong on Santorini, the British newspaper The Guardian said it may already be too late to save the island from itself unless runaway development is brought under control.

NO ELBOW ROOM

More than 3.4 million visitors are expected in 2024 on the island that has a year-round population of under 16,000 and finds itself struggling to deal with the numbers and how overwhelmed the infrastructure now is.

“We live in a place of barely 25,000 souls and we don’t need any more hotels or any more rented rooms,” he told the Guardian. “If you destroy the landscape, one as rich as ours, you destroy the very reason people come here in the first place.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/30/mayor-of-santorini-warns-of-overtourism-crisis-greece

He said that Santorini had already reached the “saturation point” before the COVID pandemic struck early in 2020 although the near shutdown of international traffic had islanders almost begging for people to come – now complaining too many did.

Santorini has an estimated 80,000 hotel beds, more per square meter than any other Greek tourist destination apart from Kos and Rhodes, the report said, noting that about 20 percent of the island has been covered over with concrete.

And despite worries about overdevelopment, state officials in Athens – who have control over the municipality – approved more building permits between 2018-22

enabling construction on another 449,579 sq meters of terrain (4.839 million square feet.

Foreign investors that are the most coveted by the government – and building luxury resorts gobbling up public beaches in violation of the Constitution – lead the pack for construction licenses for units that will be filled with mostly foreigners.

By 2028 Greece hopes to attract almost 40 million tourists nationwide – 5.5 million more than this year and nearly four times its total population, said the report by the paper’s long-time correspondent Helena Smith.

Zorzos said there’s too much development too fast and that even desalination plants to extract drinkable water from the surrounding sea can’t keep pace with how many people need the supply and the growing demand.

“The environment is our home and destroying it we harm ourselves,” he said. “We should know from the past: no ancient civilization that respected beauty ever declined,” he said in a grim warning of what might befall the island and Greece.

“There have been times when the pressure is unbearable,” said Zorzos, speaking of cruise ships coming at the same time and people packed on the cliffside sites.

“Everywhere jam-packed with people who have no time to stop, no time to enjoy, who are actually full of angst, because they are so rushed,” he said, but Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni said Greece wants to become a “global tourism power” – while trying to filter the effect that brings.