Greece: ‘Only tourism can save us’

With debts of €340bn, Greece is turning to its cultural heritage to attract a better class of visitor and make tourism the engine of the Greek economy You come to Delos by way of its ancient harbour. This, one suspects, is just as Apollo would have wished. For it is here, under the shade of a palm, that they say the god of light was born. Far removed from the merry-go-round that is Athens – or the fears over Greece’s economic plight that have reached fever pitch – the uninhabited isle is afforded a reverence that few others know. But for those braving the wind-swept seas on a Delos-bound ferry from Mykonos last week, there was no escaping the realisation that that crisis has also reached these hallowed parts. With litter bobbing on a film of filth off its beaches, its museum shop flooded and closed, and treasures – including the island’s famous lions – consigned to a building blighted by cracks, cobwebs and rusty scaffolding, the signs were hard to ignore. Lack of staff meant most of the gems had been roped off. “What can I say?” spluttered Fani Iosifidou, one of three employees guarding the site’s myriad, poppy-strewn temples, mosaics and statues. “The culture ministry was meant to dispatch more personnel at the beginning of the season but we’re still waiting. There are simply not enough of us here. If we don’t close off that space,” she said, pointing to the lions, “people go and sit on them. It’s a terrible thing.” The economic crisis that has engulfed Europe’s periphery – peaking with reports, flatly denied by the government, that Athens was poised to exit the eurozone and reinstate the drachma as its currency – is hitting at the heart of the debt-stricken country where it first erupted. A year to the week after receiving rescue loans worth €110bn, the biggest bailout in western history, austerity-plagued Greece is still struggling to stave off economic collapse. Amid frenzied speculation that it will soon have no choice but to restructure a debt load estimated at €340bn and climbing, eurozone finance ministers announced that they would meet to discuss whether Athens needs even more aid – a scenario bound to send further tensions through the EU. But for the Greeks, who have dismissed the suggestion of a euro exit as a “joke”, the answer lies closer to home – in tourism, a sector that accounts for one out of five jobs and 18% of GDP. Even as places like Delos struggle to make the best of their antiquities and museums, there is a growing recognition that economic recovery lies with a sector that for far too long has relied on tour operators and cheap mass travel. And in order to lure visitors, there is a sense for the first time that the nation must tap into its immense cultural wealth – a heritage too often neglected – as well as its natural beauty. “Tourism can be the star of development … a model for economic development,” said the socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, in a keynote speech to industry figures. “The reputation of our country is strengthened when the wealth of our monuments is displayed and when it is associated with myth, history, tradition, Greek produce and Greek

Posted by on May 7, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.