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Anastasia Balezdrova

Owners of tourist agencies in Greece registered decline in demand for tourist packages to foreign destinations for Christmas and New Year. The decline is about 30% to 50% and they think that the difference from the last year's sales can not be made up although there are still two weeks until Christmas. As a result of weak consumer interest many agencies cancel charter flights and booked tickets for organized trips in Western Europe. Indicative for the difficult market situation is the fact that there is no demand even for the "cheap" packages of 400 and 600 euros per person.
 
Panagiotis Kitsikoudis is in tourism business since 1990. He believes that travel agencies are among the first to feel the change in the market.

How much are travel agencies affected by the crisis?

The crisis impact on the sector was felt two years ago. 2008 was not a good year, 2009 was bad, and the situation in 2010 could be determined as crisis. Due to the difficulties of the market, agencies were forced to book hotel rooms and tourist services in advance without knowing whether there will be demand. Now they are in a difficult economic situation and therefore make great discounts, offer free services, accept deferred payments without a prepayment.

How about Christmas and New Year packages?

All trips were sold not later than December 5 until last year. We dealt with some final details, with payments in the remaining days of the month. This year, the bookings started on December 5 and we all hope they will continue until the last moment.

There is no change in sales of expensive cruises, transatlantic trips and holidays to exotic destinations. The crisis is affecting the middle class. We had many bookings and many cencellations until last year that was bad, as I said. This year we have not many bookings and almost no cancellations. This means that people consider very well the decision to go on short vacation.

The general feeling is that the prices of the packages are high. What is your comment?

Price differences are due solely to the quality of the offered services the prices of which are unchanged in the destination countries. Greeks’ consumer power may have declined but who would reduce prices in Prague when hotels are booked? Also, there are no differences between packages that offer the same services or the differences are insignificant if there are any.

People often decide to book their own airfares and hotel rooms on the Internet. They think the trip will cost them less. The truth is that they get not so good services for their money and their vacation costs them even more.

In recent years, price pressure shifted from the customer to the travel agency, from us the suppliers, etc. And so the packages we offer are of 10 euros cheaper, the difference being at our or our suppliers’ expense. We try to keep prices as lower as possible.

How do you see the future of tourism?

The period from January to March is not strong for us. We expect a serious rearrangement in the industry. All agencies have fixed costs formed on the basis of the market situation until two years ago. I think we can not exclude the possibility that some agencies will face many difficulties trying to survive or will be forced to resort to layoffs of staff.

Nikos Kelayditis is in the tourism industry since 1986, his agency was founded in 1979 and its main activity is to sell packages to foreigners wishing to visit Greece.

How many tourists visited Greece last year?

There is decline of around 20% from 2007 to 2010. The number of tourists visiting Greece has reached 14 million people, but now they are 12 million. These numbers are not always correct because they include basically those arriving at the bus stations and those passing through border checkpoints. However, people that are not tourists also enter the country there. The actual number is difficult to be verified by hotel reservations too, since this rating does not include other places of accommodation such as rooms for rent.

Have there been registered such declines before?
 
I remember we had a decline in tourist flow in a period when many terrorist attacks were carried out in Athens and in 1995 when there were cases of hijacked planes. Then we had an outflow of tourists mostly from the USA because the USA government had issued a travel warning to Greece. There was outflow during the Gulf War. Even then when we had a large but temporary drop in visits I was not as worried as I am now. For then we talked about external factors that could not continue forever. But it is different now because the financial problems and the change in the situation of the country are not connected with the global economic crisis and it is unclear how long this will continue.

Which of your customers are most affected by the crisis?
 
Rich people traveled, travel and will travel. They always choose the high-class destinations and continue to do it. The poor did not travel and now they will not travel at all, or not many of them traveled and they will become even less now. "Motive power" of Greek but of global tourism too are the people from the middle class who are most affected by the crisis. People in the USA were affected at first, and then in Europe where are most of our visitors and now in Greece.

We talked with Nikos while in the neighboring streets the police were chasing "demonstrators" with covered faces and there was the heavy smell of tear gas everywhere. His agency is located very close to Syntagma Square where most of the protest are held so he has often witnessed extreme actions by far right youth groups. He believes that demonstrations and protests with all their consequences are very damaging to the image that people abroad have for Greece. According to him, "such forms of protest seem strange to the tourists from Germany, France, England where most of our visitors come from. Tourists from Canada and Austria told me the same. In their opinion this is more like anarchism."

There are ten people working in the agency. He confessed that he had not fired anyone and do not intend to do this despite the difficulties. "The oldest in service employee has been working with us for 25 years and the youngest – for eight. We do not change the staff often and we do not intend to do this now."

According to Nikos, who is a board member of the Hellenic Association of Travel Agencies and Tourism (HATTA), the Greek tourist market should be opened for tourists from Latin America, Australia and Canada. The association makes strenuous efforts to present Greece to those markets, but also worldwide. "It is important to attract visitors who are interested in various forms of tourism: religious, cultural, mountaineering, river by developing them more intensively. Let us not, however, forget that tourism produces nearly 19% of GDP," he said.