With Greece simultaneously wooing tourists and more luxury resorts – while trying to find out ways to limit the effect on infrastructure, the Mayor of the country’s most popular island said any efforts could be too late for that destination.
Santorini, with a year-round population just under 16,000, is the picture perfect spot for social media postings of the spectacular sunset and cliffside boutique hotels and narrow walkways of blue and stone white.
But Mayor Nikos Zorzos said more than 3.4 million tourists will visit in 2024 – most in the summer when it’s so crowded there’s barely breathing space or elbow room and the most popular areas like Fira and Oia looks like Times Square.
He said it’s because of runaway development that the state has not only allowed but wooed as it courts the rich and luxury resorts taking over public beaches in violation of the Constitution because they bring in so much money.
Zorzos told the British newspaper The Guardian that the island will not be able to “save itself” if rampant development – the most tangible effect of overtourism – isn’t instantly curbed, no sign it will be.
“We live in a place of barely 25,000 souls and we don’t need any more hotels or any more rented rooms,” he said. “If you destroy the landscape, one as rich as ours, you destroy the very reason people come here in the first place,” he added.
Indeed, Santorini at times looks like a Las Vegas faux model of a Greek island – minus the charm and reason why people come, so many that they bump into each other and create an effect of kitschy souvenir shops instead of real life.
Zorzos said an unchecked building boom has reached the “saturation point,” and as many as 17,000 people a day coming off cruise ships alone, with the government saying there will be limits – in 2025.
Santorini has an estimated 80,000 hotel beds, more per square meter than any other Greek tourist destination apart from Kos and Rhodes. About a fifth of the southern Aegean island has already been cemented over, the report said.
THE DAMAGE DONE
Similar warnings from ecologists and conservationists have been ignored in pursuit of money and state authorities in Athens approved more building permits between 2018 and 2022, enabling construction of an additional 449,579 square meters (4.8 million square feet) which is some 30 square miles.
That has now led to a suspension on building in the wider zone of the dormant Caldera volcano on Thirisia, a small islet just off Santorini – which is under a similar directive put out in public consultation by the Environment Ministry.
The suspension covers swimming pools and building extensions as well as brand-new construction but a similar directive hasn’t been proposed for Mykonos, which critics said is under the control of developers and gangsters.
A two-year deadline was given to all tourism businesses operating in the Caldera to carry out a structural adequacy study, while the local planning authority is mandated to check all building permits in the zone by the end of 2024.
“This year, after the landslide in April, meetings of the intergovernmental committee were held specifically for Santorini and, next, the issue of the stability of the slopes of the caldera was examined,” said Efthymis Lekkas, President of the Anti-Seismic Planning and Protection Organization (OASP.)
With investors looking to cash in on Santorini’s worldwide lure, foreign-owned chains and luxury resorts have bombarded authorities with requests for building licenses as Zorzos warned of overbuilding that could drive away customers.
Greece is catering to rich foreigners, especially those from China – and expectations for a growing interest among Indians, the paper said – with estimates that arrivals in 2024 could surpass the record 333 million in 2023 – and 40 million by 2028.
That is four times the country’s population and some islands’ infrastructures are buckling under the strain of overdevelopment and overtourism, particularly scarce water supplies that has led to greater use of desalination plants.
Zorzos said further unchecked development is as much of a problem as climate change, with worries that heat waves might drive visitors to cooler climates and cut deep into the country’s biggest revenue engine.
“The environment is our home and destroying it we harm ourselves,” he said, as Greece strives to find a balance between tourism needed for money and too many ruining the reason why people come. “We should know from the past: no ancient civilization that respected beauty ever declined,” he told the paper.
Santorini, one of the world’s most Instagrammable spots, was relatively quiet until the digital age and more international travel, and didn’t even get electricity until 1974 and Zorzos said he remembers quieter times now long gone.
“Mass tourism really took off in the 1990’s and that’s when you began to see change,” he said, with profiteers lining up almost as much as the masses of tourists and everyone looking for a kill.
Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou told the paper earlier that there’s a critical need to take “a long-term” view of the capacity of islands, the pro-business government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accused by critics of opening the doors for development at all costs, even in protected areas.
“There have been times when the pressure is unbearable,” said Zorzos, speaking of occasions when five cruise ships have arrived at the same time. “Everywhere is jam-packed with people who have no time to stop, no time to enjoy, who are actually full of angst, because they are so rushed,” he said.
Greece is now one of the world’s top 10 destinations with Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni, announcing that the country has set itself the goal of becoming a “global tourism power” – while wanting to limit tourism.
Even Mitsotakis, who has chased foreign investors, said there will likely be limits placed in popular areas such as Santorini and Mykonos which he said are “clearly suffering,” but those haven’t been revealed.
Higher disembarkation fees for cruise ships are in the works and a cap on 8000 passengers a day going on islands – not said how that would work – but which Zorzos said was reasonable for Santorini.
“The cruise ship industry is key to our tourism, which is key to the Greek economy,” said a senior official who didn’t want to be named.“But it’s clear this can’t continue. There’s a very strong feeling that the whole Santorini project has to be re-thought.”
Ironically, Santorini was practically begging for tourists to return after the COVID-19 pandemic struck early in 2020 but didn’t expect to be overwhelmed with so many the island couldn’t cope with the numbers.
“But attitudes have changed. Before, people thought I was wrong to be so critical. Now they stop me in the street to say how right I was. We don’t want to become like Venice or Barcelona. We know it can’t go on like this,” said Zorzos.
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