{"id":250984,"date":"2021-05-14T20:21:05","date_gmt":"2021-05-14T17:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/greece-joins-mediterranean-race-to-win-back-tourists\/"},"modified":"2021-05-14T20:21:05","modified_gmt":"2021-05-14T17:21:05","slug":"greece-joins-mediterranean-race-to-win-back-tourists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/greece-joins-mediterranean-race-to-win-back-tourists\/","title":{"rendered":"#Greece joins Mediterranean race to win back tourists"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Greece joins Mediterranean race to win back tourists<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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NAXOS, Greece \u2014 In her kitchen, Kyriaki Kapri has enough food to feed an army. Piles of squid for frying, lemons to be quartered, thumb-thick potato wedges to make oregano-sprinkled French fries and seafood for the dishes famous on the Greek island of Naxos.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s done everything she can think of to prepare for tourists at her Naxos beachside restaurant Gorgona \u2014 Greek for Mermaid \u2014 but customers are still a rare sight.<\/p>\n

Greece launched its tourism season Friday amid a competitive scramble across the Mediterranean to lure vacationers emerging from lockdowns.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all vaccinated, the tables are outside and spread out, with hand sanitizers on each one. We\u2019re ready. Now we wait,\u201d Kapri said, standing beside large display cabinets with fresh fish on beds of crushed ice. During a six-month lockdown, Gorgona closed for the first time in its 50-year history, a pattern seen across Greece including the nearby island of Mykonos and Santorini.<\/p>\n

The European Union has yet to roll out its cellphone-friendly travel<\/a> pass system. But southern member-states, driven deeper into debt by the pandemic and highly dependent on tourism revenues, are not waiting.<\/p>\n

\"A
A ferry app<\/a>roaches the port as Portara, a marble gate which is part of an unfinished temple of Apollo of 530 B.C, stands atop of a hill on Aegean island of Naxos, Greece, Tuesday, May 11, 2021.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Croatia has already reopened, as has Cyprus, joined Friday by Greece where residents were allowed to leave home without an electronic permit for the first time in six months.<\/p>\n

Last year, the number of visitors to Greece plummeted by 78.2 percent to 7.4 million \u2014 from a record 34 million in 2019 \u2014 according to official data, with a corresponding drop in tourism revenues.<\/p>\n

Greece is hoping to claw back half the 2019 visitor level. It\u2019s vowed to finish vaccinating its entire island population over the next six weeks and will even waive test requirements for tourists who have received vaccines made in Russia and China that are not approved for use domestically.<\/p>\n

Other Mediterranean countries are also looking for an edge.<\/p>\n

Malta is promising visitors vouchers to go diving and cash rebates to high-end hotel customers.<\/p>\n

\"A
A worker cleans the balcony of a hotel room in Agios Prokopios village, on the Aegean island of Naxos, Greece, Wednesday, May 12, 2021. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In Turkey, visitors from abroad have been exempt from stay-at-home orders applying to Turks, thus enjoying an empty Istanbul and little-populated beach resorts. Starting Monday, travelers from China, Britain, Australia and 13 other countries will be allowed in without even having to present a negative COVID-19 test.<\/p>\n

Portugal is the only southern European country to so far make Britain\u2019s so-called Green List of quarantine-free destinations. Travelers in the UK pounced on the news<\/a>, according to Emma Coulthurst from holiday price comparison site TravelSupermarket.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeek-on-week, if you compare all package holiday price comparison searches via TravelSupermarket, the site has seen an 865 percent increase in searches for package holidays to Portugal,\u201d Coulthurst said.<\/p>\n

Tourism industry officials in Portugal reported a surge in bookings and inquiries from Britain, despite last-minute concerns over whether domestic lockdown rules would be relaxed before the updated UK travel list takes effect Monday.<\/p>\n

In neighboring Spain, Trade and Tourism Minister Reyes Maroto said her government was in \u201cconstant\u201d consultations with Britain to try to have its travel status upgraded. Some 18 million UK holidaymakers traveled to Spain in 2019.<\/p>\n

\"Workers
Workers install a bamboo screen at a bar restaurant in Chora, on the Aegean island of Naxos, Greece, Tuesday, May 11, 2021. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Italy is dropping a five-day quarantine requirement for travelers from the EU, Britain and Israel starting Sunday, but many in the hospitality industry are still bracing for another tough year.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think (tourism) is going to increase but very slowly. For this year we have to accept whatever comes,\u201d said Elisabetta Menardi, manager of the Ca\u2019 Foscolo apartment hotel in Venice.<\/p>\n

Just a short walk from the famed Rialto bridge, the hotel is usually fully booked year-round but is currently running at 20 percent occupancy.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally in January we already get a lot of reservations for the summer. That has stopped. So we don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming now,\u201d Menardi said. \u201cPeople make reservations, then they cancel. It\u2019s kind of a dance.\u201d ___ Derek Gatopoulos reported from Athens, Greece. Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul, Turkey, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, Karl Ritter in Rome and Joe Wilson in Barcelona, Spain contributed.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Greece joins Mediterranean race to win back tourists” NAXOS, Greece \u2014 In her kitchen, Kyriaki Kapri has enough food to feed an army. Piles of squid for frying, lemons to be quartered, thumb-thick potato wedges to make oregano-sprinkled French fries and seafood for the dishes famous on the Greek island of Naxos. She\u2019s done everything…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250985,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/05\/Greece-10.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[105757,82862,28340,74886,71470,71471,71041],"class_list":["post-250984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-5-14-21","tag-covid-vaccine","tag-europe","tag-greece","tag-tourism","tag-travel","tag-vaccines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}