British bookings going well despite Brexit

The Minister for Tourism told Alpha of the huge contribution that tourism makes to the national economy and to the development of other fields such as trade, construction, manufacturing and real estate.

She talked about the Ministry's strategy and the next steps to be taken in order to ensure the continued development of Greek tourism in 2019 following continuous records over the last four years and to maintain the double-digit increase that there has already been in bookings for this year in the international market.

"2019 is going to be a demanding and difficult year," the Minister said, referring to the challenges that she is facing: Brexit and its repercussions on the European market, the problems that low-cost airlines are facing which affect flight planning as well as increased competition from countries outside the EU who are adopting aggressive and...subsidised tourism policies and have much more funds available for advertising and marketing compared to Greece.

Ms. Kountoura said that she will be meeting with representatives from the British and European tourism industry in the immediate future in order to deal with any possible problems and to ensure increased traffic to Greece following the positive numbers of bookings from the international market as a whole but from Britain in particular - one of the two main markets for Greek tourism.