Page 28 - ATHENS RIVIERA JOURNAL 2024

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ATHENS RIVIERA JOURNALTHENS RIVIERA JOURNAL
word of mouth
word of mouth

goal is to boost visitors’ average length of stay in Athens, even those coming to the
capital for business. The second goal is to spread our visitors as much as possible
to more areas of the Attica Basin beyond the capital’s centre. The third goal is to
encourage greater average per capita spending from our visitors and of course to
extend the tourism season to a range of 12 months, which we are already achieving
in Athens. The new public and private investments in the Attica Riviera really will
contribute to all these plans.
What are the values of Attica’s new tourism product that you yourself wish
to see in the region? Will it be an environmentally and people-friendly
landmark?
The country’s tourism product as a whole must strive for sustainable viability, so
our clear aim already is ecological and social sustainability. I believe that the man-
agement of the Riviera’s development to this day should lead us there. I am opti-
mistic that we will achieve a model of balanced tourism development that other
regions of our country will replicate.
From the start of your term, you set the improvement of the GNTO’s on-
line presence at the heart of your agenda. What constitutes the updated
image of the organization’s digital transformation?
In recent years, our efforts in this area have been very efficient. We have been
strengthening our digital campaigns abroad, emphasizing our key partnerships
with major international digital tourism platforms, upgrading our digital tools,
innovating, and all without being afraid to take risks. Since the hard days of COV-
ID-19, we have invested in digital media and found ourselves at the forefront of
international competition. Our next step is to completely digitize our Οrganization
with resources from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and to improve
our operation as a whole in Greece and abroad.
Apart from innovation and an emphasis on digital tools, what other pillars
of your GNTO strategy will you be focusing your efforts on?
Our central objective is the efficiency of our promotional activities abroad. We
want to make the best use of taxpayers’ money and, through the development of
our tourism, see it bear fruit for our society many times over. That is why we are
grounded in reality, we work closely with the private sector and all tourism insti-
tutions, we are flexible with our choices, and, I think, we have produced tangible
results, recognized by the sector’s majority. But we don’t stop here – we try to
improve day by day.
As 2023 draws to a successful close, what are the GNTO’s key goals for the
2024 season?
Everything shows that 2023 will be the new landmark year for Greek tourism. We
have a remarkable increase in both revenue and arrivals in the country, without
of course overlooking the fact that particular destinations see a different picture.
These results are the outcome of everyone’s hard and methodical work these last REACHING FOR THE SKY
few years. For 2024, our main goal is to maintain the strong demand for the Greek The Secretary General of the GNTO
tourism product already recorded this year and to increase tourism revenues for has prioritised the positive societal, ecological,
even more of our country’s regions and larger sections of Greek society.  and international impact of Greek tourism.

"I am optimistic that we will achieve a model of balanced tourism
development in Riviera that other regions of our country will replicate."

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