Tourism: price dispute between hoteliers and tour operators

The dispute between the Greeks does not subside hoteliers And international tour operators for contracts and prices for the 2024 season. By 2023, Greek hoteliers have achieved an average growth of 10-12% by 2023, and now their goal is to add another 5% on top of that for 2024, industry players say.

Discussions are dominated, on the one hand, high demand for Greecesince it is now assumed that “Greece sells well”and, on the other hand, an increase in hotel operating costs due to the energy crisis and inflation.

On the part of the hoteliers, however, it seems that they are eager to take advantage of the positive climate for our country as a tourist destination through price increases that will allow hotels to cope with these increased costs.

As the president of ΠΟΞ (Panhellenic Federation of Hoteliers) Grigoris Tasios recently noted, “2022 was a good year for tourism, but in absolute terms, we are not going to be good because of the increased operating costs, which of course is not a Greek phenomenon, it is connected with global problems. It is clear that the hotel industry has shown tremendous resilience to crises, as it did during the pandemic, and although it came out “wounded”, it is clear that Greece has the potential to get its share of tourism and further support the national economy and society. We can see this in the demand that our country has in the main foreign marketsTasios stressed that the interest in Greece for the coming years is very high.

This high demand was expressed at all international tourism exhibitions held over the past period. According to a survey conducted by the Mindhaus of the Vando Group commissioned by the European Tourism Commission (ETC), Greece, with a share of 5.6%, remains in fourth place in the preferences of European tourists after France (8.2%), Spain (7.6% ) and Italy (7.4%), and ahead of Germany (4.7%), Croatia (4.5%), Portugal (4.3%), Austria (3.8%), Belgium (3.1% ) and the UK (3.1%).

The good tourist image of our country is also reflected in the prices reached by Athens hotels in April this year. According to trivago’s monthly hotel price index, in April the average room rate in Athens reached 144 euros, up 21.01% from the previous month, March, and 27.43% up from April 2022. This is the second highest average monthly price since April 2022 as it is only slightly below the previous September price. 153 euros.

The above achievements say nothing more than what the President of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, Yiannis Retsos, recently told the APE-MPA news agency: “Greece capitalizes on a very good brand that was created during the pandemic, when in 2020 it was the only Mediterranean country to open its borders with complete success. We passed the tests and passed as a country that can cope with a serious crisis”.

Retsos stressed that there is optimism that Greek tourism will contribute more than €18.2 billion to the Greek economy in 2023, surpassing the record tourism revenue of 2019.

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