Give me your suggestions, how we can improve tourism in Greece?

Question

Example: Hotel, Accommodation, Customer Service, Outdoor activities, beaches, pricing, etc.

Answer 1

In my travels, I have been throughout Canada, US, Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, Britain, Egypt, and Greece. So I compare Greece to those.

Taxis - yes, they are bad. The only other place I ran into that is Mexico, and they are no where near as bad. We heard all about it and was ready, but they still tried, they gave us a price from the airport to the hotel, then when we got there they tried to say, no each! Trying to charge us double. I got so I was pissed off just thinking I had to talk to a Cabbie.

Accommodation - It was over priced for small and basic rooms. On the list of places above, accommodation value for money - I rank Greece last.

And my biggest one is transportation. The easiest routes were ferries around the islands. But even that, I felt were unsafe. Having worked on a ferry before I was shocked to find things like locked doors and baggage stacked in front of doors. I didn't feel safe, these hazards would trap hundreds of people in an emergency.

But I had other transportation issues. If you weren't going to or from Athens it was at times impossible to get to places. I wanted to check out top ancient Greek sites, so you would think they would be easily accessible attractions. Many times when asking how can I get to here or there, or even we are going to here, the answer over and over again was why would you want to go there? Once we were sent to a completely opposite side of an Island to catch a ferry that was leaving right from were we were. Advice given to us from a "tourist information" agent.

Answer 2

I was recently in Crete and found nearly everything was great - the only hitch came at the airport while returning, so many line, so many tour groups, we were given so many different answers about which line we should be in it was ridiculous. This peart definitely needs help.
On the whole prices were good for everything, people were very friendly, some beaches that did not have the rows of beach beds on them were a bit dirty, but otherwise OK.
Most of the Cretans we dealt with spoke English and the ones that did not were still helpful as we used gestures etc.

Answer 3

Greece is doing well, so do not overdo it..
Enjoy and profit from the massive tourist interest, but do not drown Greece in endless expanding tourism whilst loosing the Greek authenticity and spirit.
Remember, we tourists are coming to see Greeks, and not only tourists..
And if you really want to improve something, provide us with GPS roadmaps. That would be a great help for those exploring your mainland and islands by car.

Answer 4

But Greece already stands out as a great tourist attraction! Don't you already have a lot of tourists? I stayed there for eleven days some years back, in Athens specifically. I enjoyed myself, I even love the food. I couldn't forget having dinner in a Greek restaurant, and there was some Greek dancing in the mini-stage set up for us tourists. To show my appreciation, I was in the act of throwing my dinner plate at the dancers (because I saw this in a Greek film!) , adn the waiter came up to me and prevented me from throwing my dinner plate. No, no senorita, he said. "We have special plates for throwing. We don't use these dinner plates." I visited the Parthenon (it's a beauty!) and the first Olympic stadium (small!). I loved looking at the Aegean Sea, and remembered my readings on the Peloponessian Wars and Greek mythology. My biggest mistake was I bought can openers (Greek design---very artistic), as souvenirs for my officemates. Boy, were they heavy! I still like using the wool sweater I bought there which was quite cheap. I also recall that Greeks love the night life, and they only return home during the wee hours of the morning.

Answer 5

In my opinion, the most important thing is that your consular officers should be polite.
They should be helpful and respect all visa applicants.
Someone should answer the consulate's phone and should be happy to give information to prospective visa applicants (Tourists!)
Greek Embassy's websites should be clear and regularly updated and provide enough information for all kinds of visas.

It is a general rule that Greek consular officers are the shittiest and most crazy people on the planet,
for Goodness sake, people ARE PAYING MONEY TO GO TO YOUR COUNTRY at least treat them with respect.

I know many friends who cancelled their trips to Greece and promised they will never pay a single Euro in Greece
because of the **** experience they had at more than one Greek consulate. They later had a Schengen visa from the French embassy (very nice people there!) and never went again to Greece.

Answer 6

I love Greece and her Islands and have been learning Greek for 3 years with a plan to live out there some day. Don't change a thing. Upgrade your accomodation by all means ,keep your prices competitive and continue to keep you beaches clean.Don't loose that friendly approach that greeks are renound for and don't have any more resorts like Kavos's. You cater for everyone, please keep it like that. If any one needs to improve the tourist approach its the tour companies.Some reps are just there for the partying.

Answer 7

Stop over-charging tourists for taxi cab rides. My mother got into a verbal fight with a man who wanted to charge us 40 euros to simply get to the airport, ripe-off! But I still love Greece, my uncles live there.

Answer 8

Better quality of accomodation is needed. Use good architects and conservation architects to create the spaces. Some are good, but not all. So tourists cannot be sure that they'll find good rooms to let etc.

Answer 9

More advertising and less expensive flights to Greece from North America!!

Cheers from Canada

Answer 10

1. Clean Greece from the albanians and the other illegal immigrants.
2. Shoot the taxi drivers that rip off tourists.