“Twice this year, tourists have approached me asking where they can buy tickets to the city center”: This is what a resident of the Belgian city of Bruges, where the population of 20,000 “welcomes” 8 million visitors each year, told a Financial Times reporter. .
Tourists in this case passed Bruges for a theme park in search of the necessary entry ticket! An example that shows how tourism transforms people’s lives on a global level, in ways that until recently belonged to the imagination – and an example that directly concerns us as Greeks given the global demand that Greece has as a place of visit and leisure. It’s almost two years since the big public debate about what we now call the “Greek summer” began. This discussion gained a lot of publicity because it echoes the concerns of many people who until then found a way out mainly in the private sphere, posing a big question: is the tourism development that the country is experiencing something that we really want and even unconditionally?
Among the topics that emerged through this discussion, one can distinguish the so-called hypertourism, which is also related to the issue of the sustainability of the tourist activity. Is it that by investing unhindered in tourism development we are finally “cannibalizing” our product, destroying our country at the same time? It can also distinguish the issue of access to our beaches and seas: have we entered a process that will lead to our exclusion from them and does this mean that we are sacrificing an important part of our culture and soul? So where are we today?
The trends
Tourism continued its upward trend this year, surpassing the figures of 2022 and breaking the record of 2019. According to the data of the Bank of Greece, travel receipts in the nine months of January – September reached 18 billion euros against 15.6 billion . euros in the nine months of last year and 16.1 billion euros in the nine months of 2019. Air passenger traffic figures confirm that 2023 will be the best year for tourism in Greece, surpassing in arrivals the 31 million of 2019. Behind these numbers are hidden some interesting trends. I highlight five.
The first is that tourism in our country has so far proven to be particularly resistant to exogenous shocks such as climate change, the region’s geopolitical instability or inflationary pressure. The demand for the “Greek summer” seems to be so great that it compensates for these problems. In other words, the observed increase has deeper, “structural” and not occasional causes. It cannot e.g. be attributed simply to the post-pandemic need for travel.
Second, hypertourism does not seem to lead, at least not yet, to a decline in the popularity of some destinations. Destinations that initially seemed to suffer the consequences of hypertourism by losing some ground, such as Mykonos and Santorini, regained their momentum after August. To put it another way, the demand of Santorini seems to outweigh the disadvantages of the bad experience associated with the excessive number of visitors. Obviously some tourists stop coming, but they are replaced by others. At the same time, the question of a “destination management” strategy at the national level seems rather impossible in a country with the characteristics of Greece, while investments in infrastructure improvement upgrade the “carrying capacity” of the destinations, postponing any problems for later. To put it another way, we can still “fit” a lot of people. The real question is at what cost.
Third, the diffusion of tourist flows outside the summer months has already begun and is probably being enhanced by climate change. October and November air traffic appears particularly strong offsetting August’s losses. This is a phenomenon that is visible to the naked eye in Athens where more and more hotels and Airbnbs show unprecedented occupancy during the winter. The extension of the tourist season has been one of the constant demands of the Greek tourism industry in the past, but this does not mean, as is often implied, that the same numbers will be divided between several months but that the numbers will increase even more.
Paros is the new Mykonos, Sifnos the new Paros, Amorgos the new Sifnos, while new destinations are constantly entering a process that swallows them up.
Fourth, the increase comes from the so-called “traditional” markets of Western Europe and North America (with arrivals from the US showing a significant increase) and how this is all happening despite China still remaining closed. In other words, the tsunami of the new, huge markets of Asia has not yet been activated, the activation of which in the short future will give exponential characteristics to the current trends.
Finally, tourism continues to boost real estate growth, as demand for holiday homes from foreigners appears to be taking on explosive characteristics. As this demand is combined with the essential absence of spatial and urban planning, it leads to the complete urbanization of the most beautiful areas of the country. At the same time, the investment dimension of the housing market in tourist destinations is turning previously vibrant communities into something completely different, essentially tourist products with a sprinkling of pseudo-authenticity. Santorini today is a place that shows us what awaits us tomorrow and the process is accelerating: Paros is the new Mykonos, Sifnos the new Paros, Amorgos the new Sifnos, while new destinations are constantly entering a process that swallows them up.
The consequences
In conclusion, without being able to rule out some unforeseen development, but taking into account the steadily increasing trend of tourist flows over the past sixty years, one can reasonably assume that this increase will not simply continue but will be decisively strengthened in the next decade. This will obviously increase the income we derive from tourism. Of course, the distribution of the revenues will be more and more with the foreign investors and it is reasonable to assume that a significant percentage will not stay in the country. What will remain in contrast will be the demand for low-skilled, and indeed imported, labor. Undoubtedly, these developments will have enormous consequences. They will literally change the texture of our daily lives in ways we can hardly imagine today. But what we can easily imagine is that the access of most of us to the “Greek summer” will gradually become more difficult, if not impossible. That is why the issue of free access to beaches acquired a “kinetic” dimension last summer, with a series of spontaneous initiatives. However, the pressure for the commercial exploitation of the beaches is so great that I doubt whether such citizen movements can bring any result by themselves, i.e. without harsh state support.
All this points to one thing: the need to move from the general discussion to the formulation of innovative and radical proposals for the management of tourism so that we can control this phenomenon, instead of allowing it to control us. If we fail the cost can be incalculable.
Mr. Stathis N. Kalyvas is a professor of Political Science, holder of the Gladstone chair at the University of Oxford.
