Greek tourism hit by recession but still seen as recovery hope

by Helena Smith

Guardian
August 4, 2011

It's 10pm on a Friday and the main drag of Laganas – party resort, hedonists' delight, Greek playground par excellence – is alive with the sound of music. Above the hubbub, a group of inebriated young Britons – many in "I love Zante" hotpants and T-shirts – unsteadily make their way up the street chanting: "It's full of shit, it's full of shit."

It seems hard to believe that this is what they are screaming until my eye catches a rep at the head of the pack who, arms flailing, is clearly encouraging the shouting. Further down the neon-lit drag, another Briton, in schoolboy's shirt and tie, lies in a drunken heap outside a bar. He smiles helplessly as a Gypsy girl, selling trinkets, chastises him.

Surveying the scene from ceramics shop she has run for the past 25 years, Vasso Georgiadou heaves a sigh of resignation. "When they don't drink they are such good kids," she says, adding that by the time the sun rises "there'll be hundreds of them" wandering the resort in a drunken stupor. "But it's not only their fault. Unfortunately, this is the tourism we Greeks have tolerated, we Greeks have gone out of our way to create, even at a time when we are in such economic difficulty."

More