Our goal is to see our visitors arrive more months of the year in Greece Minister of Culture and Tourism, Paul Geroulanos’ speech, at the 102nd ECTAA Biannual Meeting, 1-3 December 2010, Athens

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to welcome you to Athens and to thank you for the opportunity to address your conference.

As Mr Telonis has already mentioned, we recognise that you represent a key factor in the development of European tourism. And as such we consider you our partner, in our effort to radically reform Greek tourism. It is my pleasure to be here today, for I consider it an opportunity to enlist you in our effort.

As you know, Greece is an incredible destination with a lot more to offer than, what today, meets the tourist’s eye.

Many potential travelers do not know the Greek way of life well, the natural beauty of our country or our rich cultural heritage and modern creativity. Many potential travelers are unaware of the warmth of our hospitality, unaware of the opportunities for the enriching experience they can find all over the country and unaware of the multiple activities that happen in Greece off season. And the reason for this is that the tourist model we have served and promoted in the past allows for very limited development of the opportunities we hold in our hands. As of today, our visitors come mainly from two countries, mainly for 5 islands, and mainly 5 months per year.

Our goal is to see our visitors arrive more months of the year and in more destinations around Greece.

We have set this goal after careful market research. The same research that named you as one of the key factors in the development of our tourism industry. Undoubtedly, it is not an easy goal to achieve and it will take some time but we have finally set our course. The greatest opportunity that this crisis offered us is the knowledge that we can no longer beat around the bush. We can no longer set one goal and work for another. So here we are, six months into our crisis ready to make the changes we need to strengthen Greece as a destination.

The first goal was to bring all stakeholders around the same table and agree on some key common priorities. For the first time in a while we started enlisting all the things we needed to do to achieve our goals and we did it together with all those who have… in our tourism industry.

A key partners in this effort was Mr. Telonis and the Union… and I am very grateful to him for his assistance. He is the most natural link between us and you.

The second goal we decided with our partners is that we need to increase the value for money factor of tourism in Greece.

When time is a limiting constraint, the natural thing to do is to lower prices and that is what hoteliers did last year in Greece. This was an important development in keeping our arrivals steady during the year of the worst crisis in the country.

But we did not leave hoteliers alone.  As the state, we supported their effort to lower prices.  Only a few weeks ago our government struck an important deal with the European Union and the IMF and we reduced our VAT for overnight stay by almost half. We lowered it from 11% to 6%. This shows this government΄s commitment to the tourism industry and it is important that they use this reduction to attract more visitors. This was a first measure, to boost arrivals in the short run, and I do hope you make use of this policy.

But this will only buy us time. Because, to boost tourism by increasing value for money we must do two things: Reduce the «for money» part or increase the «value» part. We have done the later  but it is unsustainble. If we want to reform Greek tourism in the long run we need to boost the former, the value part.

To do so we set a third goal. To market our country more effectively. Until recently we invested in TV commercials and trade shows.  But our research showed we were planting the wrong seeds.

So we shifted our priorities:
We now know that the most powerful tools in promoting your country are: The internet and I encourage you to visit our new site visitgreece.gr. Journalists, and we have started a series of fam trips with journalists from all over the world.

Finally, you. Travel agents. You are one of the most powerful tools in promoting our country. So we sat with representatives from your industry and did two things. First we devised a country specific strategy. We abandoned the one story fits all strategy and we devised with some of you strategies for each one of your countries. And we want to do it with all of you.

The second thing we did is we developed products that can be sold in your markets.
One for Athens, called Athens Every Week
One for Thessalonika, called Cultural Crossroads
One for the rest of Greece, call Greek experiences
And one to upgrade the quality of client services in all our monuments.

I will not inundate you with details but in a nut shell this is what they are about. Athens Every Week is a program to promote everything that Athens has to offer. This is a city with amazing life and those of our visitors who see it through our eyes get to fall in love with it. Athens Every Week is a program designed to show our visitors what we love about Greece every week of the year.

• The full August moon under the Acropolis,
• The Athens Festival with is becoming one of the most important ones in Europe,
• The Athens Classic Marathon, which was a huge success this year,
• Greek Easter,
• The Acropolis car race
• Our rock wave festival
• Art Athina
• New Year’s Eve in Greek Bouzoukia

We have found 52 reasons to visit Athens and we are promoting them under one packet. The Cultural Crossroads program in Thessalonika is our way of boosting tourism in Thessalonika by promoting its cosmopolitan character. Each year the city will host one global culture from one of the fastest growing markets in the world. The Arab World and the Middle East, South Eastern Europe, China, Russia and the United States. Each of the following years each of these cultures will present their cultural heritage to the city and by doing so they will get to learn the city. Finaly Greek experiences is our plan to list, record, develop promote all those experiences that someone can live in the rest of Greece.

Climbing Mount Olympus, trecking the route of Paul the Apostle, tasting Greek wines and tasting all the different foods of Greece, discovering the amazing variety of experiences in the Peloponese. All the hidden treasures we value as locals we want to present to the world through our site, our social media, our campaign.

Finally, we are upgrading our monuments to make them visitor friendly and one of the things we are working on is expanding their visiting hours.

We did not come up with these programs on our own. These are things you told us you needed to make Greece a better destination and we took your word for it. But if there are other ideas or other things we need to do to help you in your work please let us know.

Greece in few years will be a very different country to visit. Where we go from here is up to us. But the crisis has made us all listen a little more carefully, pay a little more attention to our visitor΄s needs, and work a little bit harder in serving our clients.

We need you in our effort. And in helping, us we sincerely hope that you will become our partners in turning Greek tourism around.

Thank you.