By Alexia Sotiriou

 

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his ambition to make Greece "the best tourist destination in the world in a 10-year period" during a discussion with Luis Araujo, president of the European Travel Commission, during the forum "EU Tourism: Resilience in the Era of the Climate Crisis", held on the recently fire-stricken island of Rhodes.

 

The Greek premier spoke about the tourist season extension and stressed the need for better wages in the tourism industry, focused on the challenges of climate change and the measures taken by the government, while underlining the importance of the upcoming European elections.

 

Mitsotakis referred to the devastating wildfire that had swept across Rhodes the previous summer. He said that the island had managed to recover "incredibly quickly."

 

This reflected both the response of the central government and of regional and local authorities, as well as the way that the tourism industry and local community of Rhodes had come together to support visitors during those difficult moments.

 

"Essentially, they used this crisis as an opportunity, more or less, to change the image of Rhodes to that of a resilient island. I consider that this is a very, very important issue," Mitsotakis said.

 

He also outlined the government's measures in response to the climate crisis, noting that "the Mediterranean as a whole is a hotspot for climate change," which would bring a greater number of fires, floods and extreme phenomena.

 

"We know, of course, that these natural disasters will occur with ever greater frequency, which means that we must reinforce the civil protection mechanism as a whole. As a country, we are investing more than two billion euros on civil protection," he said, while stressing that the top priority was protecting human lives.

 

He explained that this translates into ensuring the safe evacuation of people, as had been done on Rhodes the previous summer, when 25,000 visitors had been removed to safety under complex conditions.

 

The prime minister stressed that "as a country, we invest more than 2 billion euros in civil protection."

 

Turning Greece into a "workshop" for best practices

 

Mitsotakis underlined the efforts to introduce innovative cyclical economy solutions in Greece and turn the country into a "workshop" for best practices.

 

He pointed out that these were not always related to lowering carbon emissions but also, in relation to the resilience of the tourism industry, to protecting the environment and biodiversity.

 

Next week we are hosting a major international conference in Greece, the 'Our Ocean Conference', where we expected the private sector to make specific commitments and specific promises on how we can protect our marine biodiversity," he said.

 

Airline companies adding flights to Greece as tourism seen breaking all records

 

 

Greece's tourism sector is in full swing ahead of the Orthodox Easter and the summer holidays.

 

After the record 2023 summer, with tourism receipts over 20.5 billion euros and tourist arrivals exceeding 33 million tourists, a new record of arrivals and revenues is expected to be registered in 2024.

 

A significant number of airlines are preparing to meet the increased demand in the summer with the addition of new destinations. Both tour operators with charter flights and scheduled airlines announced additional connections with Greek airports.

 

The Jet2 group has already launched the largest program for Greece that it has implemented so far, with the capacity of airline seats increasing by 12% compared to 2023.

 

More than 100 routes are available from 11 UK airports to 14 airports in Greece: Athens, Corfu, Chania, Heraklion, Kefalonia, Rhodes, Kos, Thessaloniki (Chalkidiki), Skiathos, Santorini, Zakynthos, Lesbos, Kalamata and Preveza.

 

The company will also add a fourth weekly flight from Manchester to Santorini. The total number of Jet2 air seats sold to Greece this year amounts to 1.52 million.

 

TUI Airways is also expanding its flight schedule to the islands of Rhodes and Kos in the summer season of 2024 with new routes. The new connections concern the routes: Birmingham-Kos, from 5 May 2024, and Manchester-Rhodes, from 4 May 2024. In addition, TUI in collaboration with Wizz Air will connect Vienna with Chania and Budapest with Heraklion.

 

Air France also added new flights to Greece in the summer, including Kalamata, every Saturday from July 6 to August 31. Also, Aegean Airlines added its 4th consecutive flight from Athens to London to its schedule. United Airlines has announced that it is enhancing flights from Greece by 25% for 2024, while seasonal routes from Athens to New York/Newark and Washington Dulles will begin earlier.

 

O'Hare is also planning a new flight from Chicago to Athens, from May 24, 2024.

 

Heraklion welcomes a new airline

 

Heraklion will welcome a new airline. This is Romania's Bees Airlines, which will connect Chisinau with Heraklion.

 

EasyJet is adding 5 new routes from Athens this summer, connecting the Greek capital with Lyon and Bordeaux in France, Venice in Italy, and Malaga and Palma de Mallorca in Spain.

 

Also, the flight schedule of the British carrier for 2024 includes two new routes to Sitia, from Milan (Malpensa) and from Naples, a route from Amsterdam to Chania, and one from Basel to Chania.

 

Also, the new connections are Nantes-Corfu, Naples-Preveza, Naples-Zakynthos.

 

Flights to Corfu, Heraklion, Kos and Rhodes will start from Birmingham, while Skiathos will be connected to Bristol, Rhodes to Geneva, Skiathos to London and Manchester and Kefalonia to Nice in France. Ryanair has added five new flights to Greece for 2024.

 

More specifically, the low cost airline added a route from Milan (Bergamo) to Skiathos, from April 1, a route from Stockholm (Arlanda) to Rhodes and a route from Weeze to Kos.

 

Among the new additions are two itineraries from Thessaloniki, to Helsinki and to Sarajevo. PLAY, Iceland's low-cost airline, started its flights from Athens earlier this year, specifically on March 24, connecting the Greek capital directly with Iceland and with destinations in the United States and Canada.

 

This year, PLAY will operate two flights a week from "Eleftherios Venizelos" Airport.