Why tourism is not going to pull Greece out of the recession

Hello everyone, long time no speak! I'm finally back from Greece and Albania. I do love Greece and the Greek people so much - but damn, there were so many nasty British tourists there and that ruined my experience there. Let me explain the problem with Greece's tourist industry and why it is not going to solve Greece's current economic woes: there are a few countries that have catered to the low-end, the budget end of the market by offering cheap holidays. There's Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Portugal - you'll never find budget holidays to somewhere like Germany, Iceland, Sweden or France but these Southern European countries have dominated the budget holidays market. It is also no coincidence as well that these Southern European countries are the ones hardest hit by the current recession.

Limpeh in Corfu old town.

In the case of Greece, well you know how the Greek economy has been in so much trouble for the last few years and they have become increasingly dependent on tourism which brings in cold, hard cash from foreign tourists. I went to Corfu which is a beautiful island that has some agriculture but is mostly dependent on tourism. Most of the people there work in some kind of job related to the tourism industry: you have people running guesthouses or hotels for the tourists, those working in the gift shops selling souvenirs, those working in the tourist attractions, then there are the many bars, clubs and restaurants which are primarily serving the tourists and then there are all other kinds of services from tour operators to taxi drivers to those who drive those coaches/buses for tourists.

Don't forget, the major source of tourists for Greece had traditionally been the UK and Germany amongst other EU countries - but these countries have been hit by the recession as well and so many people in these EU countries are choosing not to go on holiday or spending a lot less on holidays. So even if they come to Greece, they will be coming on a budget rather than looking for luxury holidays. There has been a significant increase in the number of Russian tourists to Greece (and a smaller increase from China as well) but these have not boosted demand sufficiently to keep everyone in the Greek tourism industry afloat - figures are still lower today compared to the pre-recession days.

The Greek economy is in trouble and has been for a while.

With the Greek economy in big trouble, the locals know that they can turn to tourism for employment because tourists will always want to come to Greece because Greece is just so amazingly beautiful. About 20 million tourists are expected to visit Greece in 2014, spending a lot of money there to boost the ailing local economy. But what happens when everyone looking for a job turns to tourism and the supply for tourism services and facilities far outstrips the demand? This drives prices down: it's simple economics. The number of tourists visiting Corfu every summer is finite and if you increase the number of hotel rooms available, then increasing the supply without a subsequent increase in demand is only going to drive down the prices. Tour operators then slash prices to try to fill these empty hotel rooms as the summer holiday season approaches and that is why you can get super cheap bargains for Greek holidays.

Is that a bad thing? Well, yes and no. I got me a holiday to one of the most beautiful parts of Greece at a ridiculously low price - we all love a bargain. I paid £137.50 (S$289) for 7 nights accommodation (2 stars) plus flights from London to Corfu. And that's not even the cheapest deal available - I picked that deal in particular because the dates suited my schedule.  You could packages like that for as little as £89 (S$187). Now I am not some pampered princess when I am traveling. I am more than happy to have fairly basic accommodation when on holiday, it's just a place for me to sleep at night and I will be out doing loads of interesting activites in the day. Now the place I stayed at was actually pretty decent indeed, the main problem however, was the rest of the guests at the resort. Oh goodness me, where do I begin?

Cheap bargain? You get what you pay for.

At such low bargain prices starting from £89 for a week's holiday, Greece has been attracting loads of British tourists who won't other be able to afford a holiday abroad - but they look at prices like that and think, wow even I can afford that. Certainly you won't be able to get an equivalent deal anywhere in the UK for that price. But they come to Greece and realize, oh it costs money to do anything - you want to go on an excursion to a historical site, that's €30 each. You want to take a cruise to a nearby island, that's €35 each. You want to go to a nice restaurant in town, that's €28 at least a person. You want to go to Aqualand, the huge water theme park, that's €25 each. You want to spend a day at the spa, that's €27.50 each. You see, these super cheap packages are not guided tours, so unless you're prepared to spend at least €50 (S$83) a person per day to have fun, you're stuck in your room with little to do. If you've brought a family of four, that's €200 a day, €1400 a week (S$2333). Cheap holiday? Think again.

And you think, surely they can still take walks and explore the town on foot, all that is free, right? Wrong. Corfu is a rather big place, the place where I stayed was 40 km from Corfu town centre - a return bus ticket into town is €7.20 (and I did make that trip), not too bad but even when you get into town, to visit anything, to do anything still costs money. The hotel where I stayed at was in a sleepy little town that you could really explor in under two hours or so, but it didn't matter to me as I was just using it as a place to rest whilst I did plenty of excursions everyday rather than treating it as my holiday destination per se. For this to be a truly cheap holiday, you would have to stay in the small town, buy the cheapest food from the local Dimitra supermarket to eat and perhaps spend a lot of the time on the beach or just wandering around the local olive groves (and hope that the farmers won't chase you off their land) but that would certainly mean missing out of the most beautiful sights and famous tourists attractions of Corfu.

At Avlaki beach, near Kassiopi - the water is blue!

The hotel complex I stayed at was full of these low-income, poor British tourists who stocked up on cheap beer from the local shop and spent all day sitting around in the gardens of the hotel complex getting drunk. They left their kids to play in the pool all day whilst the parents were passed out on the deck chairs by midday from having drunk so much cheap booze. They couldn't even be bothered to take their kids to the beach which was a 10 minute walk away as they expected the bar staff to keep an eye on their kids for them. It was a sad, grim sight - there was a budget water theme park Hydropolis just down the road from us within walking distance, it costs €12 for a discounted ticket (and on two days a week, that even includes an all you can eat buffet) and even then, they just couldn't be asked to go.

Fueled by the summer heat (it reached 38 degrees on some days), the cheap booze, mosquitoes (oh there is a real problem with mosquitoes in Greece during the summer months) and sheer boredom, these low-income British families often turned on each other. The kids bickered amongst themselves, the parents smacked their kids, spouses quarreled with each other or they chose to pick fight with random strangers. Oh the number of times I was awoken by shouting in the night was unreal - I never got a decent night's sleep and I was always awoken by some nasty disturbance. I well and truly regretted getting this super cheap bargain deal as I dreaded these people who surrounded me. I could shut myself in my room, avoid the pool but I could still hear them when they got drunk and acted in a very anti-social manner.

The heat and boredom brought out the worst in the British tourists.

There was one particularly notorious older British couple who were there on their 25th wedding anniversary - they never left the town but would sleep all day, then drink all night. They once stumbled through the  the pool area shouting, dancing and singing at 3 am - when the other guests told them to keep quiet, the woman shouted back, "fuck you motherfuckers, I'm on my fucking holiday, I will fucking do what I want, deal with it fuckers. I'm celebrating my 25th wedding anniversary and I wanna have a good time." One other woman shouted back, "if this is the kind of shit your husband has put up with for the last 25 years, then you two assholes deserve each other!" That drunk woman then fell into a drain in the dark, talk about karma. And this happened every single day, I was lucky enough to be able to change rooms to get as far away as possible from them in the building.

One does wonder what the point of a holiday is - when they come to somewhere like that only to get drunk, be miserable and pick fights: is that their idea of a holiday? You can do all that at home without flying 3 hours to Greece! The irony is that they were on this stunningly beautiful Greek island with so much culture, history and stunningly beautiful scenery around them, but they were oblivious to it all. Bringing them to Greece is like casting pearls at swines - the British working classes have no appreciation of what Greece has to offer and would normally not come to a place like that, but wish such good offers available, now anyone can afford to come to Greece and there is now a whole industry is Greece catering for people like that. The question I want to raise is this: is this the kind of tourism that Greece really needs? Why are they fishing for scraps at the very bottom of the budget tourism market?

Is this the kind of tourism that Greece needs or even wants?

I struck up a conversation with a lovely Greek lady in a shop where I was getting ice cream (let's call her Mrs Pagota, as pagota is Greek for ice cream) - she was intrigued by the fact that I spoke some Greek. My Greek is basic but I get by and certainly, given that most of the tourists on the island were European (mostly British, German and Russian) my Asian-Chinese face was a rare sight and the fact that I spoke Greek made people want to speak to me. I loved chatting with Mrs Pagota - her shop was unfortunately very quiet and she was always pleased to chat to me in a mishmash of Greek and English. This was what Mrs Pagota told me.

"We make most of our money in the tourist season in the summer months from May to September. The rest of the year it is very quiet and times have been very hard, especially since the economic crisis. So many young people in Greece cannot find any kind of work. We have to pay more taxes now you know and people think, oh you have a shop, you have a business, you're not unemployed so you must be doing okay, but it all depends on how much business I get and I have good days and then I have bad days. We mostly get English tourists in this town as the local hotels deal with English travel companies to fill the rooms - but this year has been bad. The tourists come but they don't spend much money. They come into my shop and complain that this is too expensive or that costs less in England. I have to explain that we're on a Greek island, everything has got to come from the mainland by ship so it costs more naturally.

Unemployment is high in Greece, at 28%, with 61% under 25 unemployed.

Many English tourists want English food products, but they expect to pay the same price as they do in an English supermarket or less - they think, this is Greece it must be cheap. But no, it is cheap if you get Greek things but where do you think we get English food products from? England of course and that makes English food in Greece a lot more expensive than in England. They don't get it - they think I am some Greek crook trying to swindle them out of their money. They spend so little money and they give us so much trouble. Some of the hotels here are really struggling because they are having to deal with very difficult guests who cause so much trouble but pay so little for the rooms, it is not worth having guests like that. I am struggling, but I don't know what else to do. My daughter has gone to work in England, maybe when she gets a good job, then maybe I can retire, one day."

Then across the road from Mrs Pagota, there is this Gyros place where they do all kinds of barbecue meats. Great food, reasonable prices and you can dine in the garden under a lattice of grape vines that grow overhead. My favourite dish there is the Kokoretsi, a regional delicacy. The head waitress there is this lovely Greek lady who speaks German, Spanish, Italian, French and English and I would have such fun ordering in a different language each time with her. She is in fact learning Russian now given the influx of Russian tourists to Greece and she is clearly a highly intelligent woman who cannot find any other employment apart from putting her language skills to use as a waitress in such a setting. I would have thought that with her language skills, she could work as a tour guide or at least as a manager in a hotel, but I didn't think I could ask her point blank, "you're clearly very smart, why are you working as a waitress?"

The food in Greece was amazing!

Despite the economic crisis, Greece is so beautiful and all the Greek people I met were so lovely. I think I had an especially good experience with the locals because I had made a valiant attempt at speaking Greek with them, whereas most visitors never master more than a few words. I was actually having conversations in Greek with them. I can't actually use the common phrase, "it's all Greek to me" (I don't understand it at all) as now, I do speak some Greek. Ironically, the equivalent of "it's all Greek to me" in Greek is "Αυτά μου φαίνονται κινέζικα" which translates as "this strikes me as Chinese" and hey, I speak Chinese too!

Shame about the nasty British tourists though, I felt especially sorry for the Greek family who ran the place where I stayed - the older couple spoke German and English very well and clearly worked hard for a living, but given how little I paid for the week, I wonder how much of a profit they actually made? Probably very little, if any. Certainly, none of the people I met in Greece were doing particularly well out of tourism, not the Greek couple running the place where I stayed, not the multi-lingual waitress at the barbecue restaurant and certainly not dear old Mrs Pagota. But that's the problem: tourism can only provide so many jobs for the Greeks and if too many Greeks saturate that market, then nobody wins because none of them can make a half decent living from it due to the intense competition. Supply & demand, it's economics 101.  That was exactly the same scenario that I had observed in Bali, Indonesia last year.

I would like to end with a joke that was told to me by a Greek local I befriended on a bus. I need to explain that the roads on Corfu are narrow and the bus drivers often drive like maniacs because they are never on schedule and are always rushing to their destination. "A Greek bus driver and a Greek Orthodox priest died on the same day and went up to the pearly gates. They were both greeter by Saint Peter who immediately let the bus driver through but told the priest that they were not sure if he had done enough to gain his place in heaven. The priest was shocked. He protested, 'Saint Peter, I have dedicated my life to god and the church. I worked tirelessly all my life as a priest to help all in my town to find god and understand our faith. That bus driver only shows up in my church during Christmas and Easter, what has he done to earn his place in heaven that I haven't?' Saint Peter replied, 'We are more than aware of what you did and what he did. When you conducted your services, most of your congregation slept. When the bus driver was driving his bus, every one of his passengers without exception prayed." Now that joke would have been truly funny if not for the fact that were were on a bus that had nearly collided with a scooter driven by two teenagers coming the wrong way down a one way narrow village street.

Such is the way I experienced Greece and I will be posting more photos and videos soon to give you an idea of what I did there (and in Albania too, of course). So to conclude, if you want to go to Greece, here is a summary for you.

At Kassiopi harbour in North Corfu

1. Do go to Greece, it is incredible beautiful and rich in culture.
2. Do pay more to stay in a classy 4 to 5 star hotel to avoid undesirable British tourists
3. Be prepared for the mosquitoes which are ferocious in the summer
4. If possible, avoid summer as it gets too hot, visit in spring, winter or autumn.
5. Do be prepared to spend money to make the most of your holiday and have a good time.
6. Do get to know the locals - they are friendly, genuine and such lovely people.
7. Do your homework before visiting and plan your trip carefully.
8. Do bring a pair of goggles for snorkeling - the blue seas are often thriving with fish life!
9. Do learn some Greek - the locals mostly speak English but do appreciate it when you try.
10. Do be prepared to bargain - you don't ask, you don't get.

That's it from me for now. Do let me know if you have any questions about traveling to Greece, efharisto poli!