The cost of coronavirus: Greek tourism slump threatens a decade of hard-won gains

ATHENS - About now, Charlie Chahine should be welcoming his first international guests of the season to his Suites of the Gods resort on Santorini, Greece’s most popular holiday island.

“The situation now is at zero, nothing is moving. How will tourists get here without airplanes? In a submarine?” says Chahine. Around him, the whitewashed buildings of Fira, the island’s main settlement, are a ghost town. The pandemic threatens not only to rob Santorini of income and jobs; it risks sending Greece, whose tourism industry makes up a fifth of the economy, sliding back toward the dark days of the euro zone crisis a decade ago.

Greece’s sovereign debt is expected to balloon out to almost 200% of economic output, more than undoing the gains earned through the painful public spending cuts that the euro zone and IMF demanded as the price for bailouts.Though it has one of Europe’s best records at handling the pandemic, with 2,678 coronavirus cases and 148 deaths, its tourism industry relies overwhelmingly on overseas visitors, especially from Europe, the United States and China.

“There are encouraging signs that its response will be commensurate to the measures announced by the ECB.” “This season is not going to be like the other years,” Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis told Reuters. “I’d be a fool to believe this could ever be the case.”

Greece welcome to 4th world country 😂😂😂😂😂

Sleepless nights are ahead for Mama Merkel

They should focus on how to survive the tourism instead of having an arms-race with Turkey.

p_von_eulenburg Those are NOT Greek houses by the way. They're typical North African dwellings. This style was kidnapped by the Greeks.

This too shall pass

The rest is the same

Hopefully this will be a wake up call for europe that tourism is not the solution for economic growth. - it is not offering high growth in long term - polution - many 'low quality jobs' - Europe should't become an open air museun

I’ll go there now if they let me

Portugal Ireland Greece Spain

Time to buy houses in Greece

greeks are robbers, and they are managing very well their dirty business....german will pay like usual for them

i need a strong man to help me sleep 🍆

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