Greeks cut hotel prices as tourists stay away

GREEK hoteliers are slashing prices in a last-ditch effort to lure visitors to Athens this summer after hopes of an Olympics-driven tourist boom boosted by Greece’s unexpected victory in the Euro 2004 football championships were dashed.

Security concerns, high prices and a failure to link Greece’s sea-and-sun image with the modern Olympics have pushed foreign arrivals down by 12 per cent over the last year, nine days before the games begin.

Adding to hoteliers’ woes, 7,500 Athens hotel workers went on their sixth strike for higher wages yesterday.

"The drop recorded compared to expectations is dramatic," said Nikos Angelopoulos, vice-president of the Greek Tourist Industry Association. "The Olympics on their own were not reason enough for foreigners to come."

Most officials blame Greece’s failure to capitalise on the world’s biggest sports event on greed.

Hotels inflated prices last winter in the hope of high demand that never materialised and instead scared away many visitors.

"The prices we got from hotels in the winter were too high. Now we keep getting offers slashing them drastically," said Beryl Fotopoulos, co-owner of Metropolitan Travel in Athens, which specialises in travel to Greece.

The Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA) said Athens hotels had expected to sell 100,000 to 150,000 beds a night during the games but have sold only 70,000 to 120,000.

They are cutting prices for mid-range hotels to 150 (100) from 350-400 and for luxury hotels to 350 from 500-600.

"Some hoteliers overpriced and didn’t get any clients. It serves them right," said HATTA’s president, Yiannis Evangelou.

Greece had 12 million visitors last year, more than its population of 11 million. Tourism makes up 18 per cent of Greece’s economy and employs about 800,000 people.

The games organisers, ATHOC, have booked about 90 per cent of the rooms in the Athens region but, despite the guaranteed arrivals of Olympic officials and guests, the industry has failed to buck a declining trend in recent years.

In central Athens’ Syntagma Square, usually teeming with tourists, few foreign visitors could be spotted on a recent afternoon. A group of Romanians said they were impressed with the city’s Olympic makeover but were concerned about costs.

"It’s a very nice city and the people are also very nice but the prices are a bit high," said Doru Paunescu, 35.

The Greek Tourist Organisation (EOT) said prices were the main reason for the decline but also admitted its advertising campaign came too late and did not capitalise on the Olympics. It said it was now trying to lure last-minute travellers.

"Our expectations were too high when we got the Olympics. It was wrong to focus all hopes on this one year," the EOT president, Harry Coccossis, said.

Yesterday’s strike appeared to have no serious impact on operations at some main hotels but employees have not ruled out an escalation of action during the Olympics, which run from 13 to 29 August.

"It depends on the hoteliers," said Christos Katsotis, the president of the city’s main hotel workers’ union. It represents 7,500 workers, most of them junior-level staff.

Union bosses said the participation rate stood at 70 per cent, but hotels presented a mixed picture. In one hotel guests filing down to breakfast were not even aware of a strike.

"We were just told to come in a bit earlier in case someone tried to stop us coming to work," said a young woman serving coffees.

Hoteliers, who have invested heavily in improving the infrastructure of hotels, slammed what they described as "blackmail" tactics.

The strike was unnecessary because workers were given pay increases under an industrial tribunal ruling in June, Athens hoteliers said in a statement.

"And this [pay rises] occurred during a period when tourism to the Attica region declined for the third consecutive year."

The striking workers, who include both Greeks and foreign staff, say they now earn an average 500 per month, about the same as the day rate at some of Athens’s most expensive hotels.

They want salaries doubled to what they say is the minimum wage of 1,100. "We love the tourists and the people, but we have got to survive as well. We can’t survive on this," said one hotel worker, Nicos Papageorgiou.

Meanwhile, Greek officials yesterday said years of delays and infighting had pushed up the cost of staging the Games beyond all expectations and forced the country’s 2004 budget deficit way over European Union limits.

"The way things are going, the budget deficit is heading towards 4 per cent [of GDP], maybe a bit over," the deputy finance minister, Petros Doukas, said. The EU’s limit is 3 per cent.