‘It can make our country rich”. This prophecy came from an editorial in Greek newspaper Kathimerini in 1949. But to what was it referring? Manufacturing? It is minimal in Greece. Agriculture? Apart from olive oil and cheese production, it is in serious decline. Financial services? Although Athens once saw itself as a future economic hub of the Balkans, it never happened.
What did happen, almost surreptitiously, was tourism. It just grew, without control or safeguards. In the aftermath of the second World War, the US Marshall Plan, dedicated to rebuilding Europe’s economies, saw the “invisible resource” of sunshine as a financial necessity, creating a huge imbalance of foreign exchange in Greece’s favour. This emphasis on attracting foreign capital remains the core of Greece’s policy on tourism.
Tourism numbers mushroomed from 33,000 in 1950 to 400,000 a decade later. Last year, 38 million visitors spent €23.6 billion, more than 25 per cent of Greece’s GDP. So much so that, without it, today’s Greek economy would collapse.
That 1949 editorial went on to argue “[t]here is only one big, important, national industry for Greece”. But the writer warned even then that “tourism has never been treated in a serious way by any government”. This, despite the fact that Greece had had a National Tourism Organisation (the equivalent of Fáilte Ireland) since 1929.
READ MORE
Today, the same newspaper, Kathimerini, points out that the dangers of excessive tourism were apparent from at least the 1980s, with “loss of authenticity” as one of the key factors in its impact on Greek society. In 1987 Gerald Durrell, who had spent an idyllic childhood in Corfu in the 1930s, accused local hoteliers of greed in destroying the island’s beauty, referring to “vandalism beyond belief”.
One of the most eloquent criticisms of mass tourism (or “overtourism” as it is called in the light of the excessive numbers) has been the attendance of tourists at the “panegyri”, the traditional village festival of thanksgiving, often associated with a local saint, on islands such as Ios and Ikaria. These incomers, it is said, are simply using the festivals as an excuse for getting pissed, with no regard for the significance of the event. On Sifnos, one resident complained that “our panegyri have turned into raves, we locals don’t recognise them any more”.
Criticism of tourism has focused at national level on the lack of any development plan that would take into comprehensive consideration the deficits of mass tourism as well as the obvious benefits. This year the government published a “spatial framework for tourism”. It is limited to what can be built and where, including the number of tourist beds per island, so it ignores the impact of mass tourism on Greek society and equally turns its back on the creation of niche markets for non-beach activities such as skiing, gastronomy or wine-tasting.
No one would deny that the extent of tourism accommodation is a crucial issue, especially on the smaller islands. In Mykonos, in particular, overcrowding has been rife, with the planning office allegedly turning its back on illegal building. In both Mykonos and Santorini there are more than four tourist beds per permanent resident, while Zakynthos, with a population of 40,000, hosts six million tourists each year.
Lacking on the part of government thinking from 1949 onwards is a conceptual framework for tourism, but many would argue it is too late for that. The writer of the 1949 editorial referred to tourism as a “highly foreign term”, because it was almost unknown, certainly in its present form of mass tourism. The idea that Greeks themselves would lie on the beach in order to get a suntan was, indeed, “foreign”. The irony is the Greek word “xenos” means both “stranger” or “foreigner” and “guest”, so it has a double meaning: someone to whom you offer hospitality, but whom you also fear (the source of “xenophobia”).
[ Europe’s oversaturated tourism industry reaches tipping pointOpens in new window ]
The essence of hospitality is the relationship of host to guest. Mass tourism has made that relationship impersonal and anonymous. Eirini Karamouzi, an Athens-based professor, argues that “through tourism we negotiate our identity”, but also reflects that Greece is in danger of turning into “one giant hotel”, with 25 per cent of the workforce employed in tourism as “a nation of waiters”. She argues that no consideration has been given to “how a society lives with tourism and off tourism without losing control, its sense of place and way of life”.
[ These European cities want fewer tourists, but its airports have other ideasOpens in new window ]
Not only has Greece never addressed the phenomenon of tourism, other than financial number-crunching, but the present government seems unaware of the changing nature of the tourism product: climate change, minority interests, the need to give value for money, and the geopolitical situation vis-a-vis Turkey and the Middle East are ignored in favour of “making our country rich”.
