Tourism, if properly developed, could create up to 150,000 new jobs by 2010 in Greece - around 35 percent of the total amount of people currently unemployed in the country, said a survey from the Greek Union of Tourist Enterprises obtained Wednesday.

Employment in the tourism industry grew by 87-percent over the last 20 years, compared with a 15-percent decline in the manufacturing sector. In the same period, total employment in Greece grew by just 9.2 percent, the Athens News Agency (ANA) quoted the survey as saying.

A total of 808,000 people (around 18 percent of the total workforce in the country) were directly or indirectly working in the Greek tourism sector in 2000, according to the latest available, comprehensive figures. 89,000 persons were on part-time contracts.