May 25, 2012
Greece's tourism season was supposed to be a ray of sunshine amid the country's political crisis and depressed economy.
Instead, the outlook is cloudy: Greek-vacation bookings from Germany and the rest of Europe are down sharply, as would-be tourists take fright at the prospect of strikes and street protests.
The political uncertainty dogging Greece ahead of its June 17 elections and fears the country could crash out of the euro zone has weighed on reservations in the past few weeks. Bookings in May for summer vacations are down by about one-third compared with May 2011, amid intense pan-European media coverage of Greece since its May 6 elections, which left the country without a stable government.
"We are definitely seeing an across-the-board decline in prebookings," says Andreas Andreadis, president of the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises, known as SETE. Early reservations for this summer's tourist season are down by around 15% from a year ago. Last year's record total of 16.4 million visitors is already out of reach, he says.
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