Tourism-related remittances reached 489 million over the first quarter of 2017, a decrease of 9.2 percent over the corresponding period of 2016, the Bank of Greece (BoG) announced on Friday, a development that is expected to again “ruffle feathers” in the Cabinet-level tourism ministry.
The embattled leftist-rightist coalition government, and especially the tourism ministry’s leadership, are anxiously anticipating a banner year in the tourism sector for 2017 in order to offset what is shaping up as a stagnant first half of the year, in the overall economy, after a prolonged recession.
Lower tourism revenue per capita, as the BoG reported for 2016, despite increased arrivals, as cited by the government, merely fuelled a thinly veiled grudge between central banker Yannis Stournaras and the SYRIZA led government last year.
For Q1 2017, the BoG said average tourism spending per overnight stay was 54 euros, down one euro from Q1 2016. The average number of overnight stays by holiday-makers during the same low-season period was 5.5, down 3.4 percent from Q1 2016.
At the same time, despite optimistic predictions for the current year, arrivals between January and March 2017 reached 1.637 million, down from 1.710 million during the same quarter of 2016, a decrease of 4.2 percent.
Meanwhile, in a closely watched meeting on Thursday between Alexis Tsipras and the new leadership of the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) at his official Maximos Mansion, the former reiterated the target of 30 million tourist arrivals in 2017. The meeting was held in the presence of Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura.
New SETE President and the rest of the group’s presidium focused on two main problems they said beleaguer Greece’s all-important tourism sector, namely, high taxes and the decades-old conundrum entailed with land use in the east Mediterranean country. A new surcharge to be imposed as of 2018 on overnight stays – one of the many direct and indirect tax hikes from 2016 “tax tsunami” – is especially frustrating for tourism professionals.
In terms of land uses and zoning, a particularly acute problem in still mostly cadastre-less Greece, sources told “N” that tourism representatives underlined that newly processed maps by the relevant authorities show that the “entire country has turned into a forest”.
Based on Greece’s antiquated laws, building on forestland, even if it is privately owned and even if it was reforested, is prohibited in most cases.
SETE’s leadership called for a better processing of land use maps.
