Greece
aims to exploit untapped tourism revenue by allowing diving for post-19th
century shipwrecks in the near future, Tourism Minister Harry Theocharis said
Monday as his country is already enjoying growth in the key sector.
In an interview, Theocharis said tourists would
over the next few years be allowed to explore wrecks that were off limits
before.
The minister announced the plans as the
government forecast an increase of 10 per cent in visitor revenues this year.
Shipwreck tourism is not part of the 2020 revenue estimate.
“We will liberalise the creation of diving
parks. We will allow diving in shipwrecks over 50 years old, which are
currently not allowed,” Harry Theocharis said in an interview.
A bill would be introduced “within a month” to
open shipwrecks “after 1860” and until 1970 to divers, he said.
No details were given Monday, but the Greek
seabed holds a large number of shipwrecks from World War I and World War II,
including the Britannic, fleet mate of the Titanic, a British hospital ship
sunk in 1916 near the island of Kea.
As Greece slowly emerges from a decade-long
financial crisis it relies heavily on tourism to boost economic growth and
accelerate job creation.
The sector accounts for about a quarter of the
country’s gross domestic product and employs around 20 per cent of the total
workforce.
The ministry earlier Monday said tourism
revenues in 2019 grew by 12 per cent at around $20 billion from about $18
billion in 2018.
It expects arrivals will increase by five per
cent in 2020 from last year when they were 31 million, up 3.6 per cent from the
previous year.
Greece currently draws over three times more
tourists than its 10.8 million residents, but Athens still has “a lot of
untapped potential,” the minister said Monday.
Shortly after the government took power in July
the sector suffered a blow with the collapse of British travel giant Thomas
Cook, which left thousands of tourists stranded on the Greek islands.
Theocharis said there was an immediate impact
of over $132 million in unpaid invoices to Greek operators, and another 500
million euros in lost contracts.
Over 3,000 employees in Greece were also
affected, losing seasonal jobs a month early, the minister said.
“Given the issues that arose during the year,
it’s obvious that we are relieved” by the 2019 results, he said, adding that
negotiations with airlines and other operators had “effectively covered all 1.6
million airline seats” lost.
Theocharis acknowledges “strain in the
infrastructure” of some successful island destinations, but insists Greece is
“nowhere near the kind of [congestion] issues other destinations are currently
facing.”
For top island destinations such as Santorini,
he says officials are “working to establish a berth allocation system which is
more granular... to create incentives or disincentives to spread out [cruise
ship] flows,” he says.
‘Play it safer’
Theocharis and other ministers travelled to
Paris on Tuesday in a business delegation headed by Prime Minister Kyriakos
Mitsotakis to attract investment to Greece.
The eight-billion-euro project involving
residences, hotels, shopping centres and cultural venues, has been delayed for
years, but the government is hopeful construction will begin this year.
Greece’s gaming regulator last week selected US
operator Mohegan Gaming and Entertainment for a new casino that is part of the
complex, one of the steps needed to get the project moving.
“Some investors want to play it safer. For
those, a big proportion of the investing community, they need to see it
happening before they take the risk,” Theocharis said.
“When we see the first bulldozers [at
Hellinikon], it will be a significant milestone [showing] that we’re open for
business.”