{"id":127393,"date":"2025-05-24T07:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T07:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127393\/"},"modified":"2025-05-24T07:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-05-24T07:22:07","slug":"panic-in-greece-as-country-faces-huge-new-tourist-problem-world-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/127393\/","title":{"rendered":"Panic in Greece as country faces huge new tourist problem | World | News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summer 2025 is on track to set new records for tourism in Greece. According to INSETE\u2019s\u00a0<\/a>Air Data Tracker, 28.2 million international air seats are scheduled for this season, which marks a 4.6% increase from 2024. The UK remains Greece’s top tourism market with about 5.6 million seats booked, up by 2.2% from 2024, Greek City Times<\/a> reported. However, this surge in tourist numbers has created an unexpected challenge: a massive labour shortage in the hospitality sector.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of restaurant and hotel jobs must be filled in just a few weeks. Around 80,000 positions in Greece\u2019s hotel and food service industries remain vacant, which are vital sectors to the nation\u2019s economy, which accounts for roughly a quarter of Greece\u2019s GDP, The Guardian<\/a> reported.<\/p>\n

Giorgos Hotzoglou, president of the Panhellenic Federation of Workers in Food Service and Tourism (POEET), told The Guardian: “It\u2019s partly a legacy of the [Covid<\/a>-19] pandemic, which all of Europe has felt, but in Greece the problem is particularly acute.<\/p>\n

“What we\u2019re seeing is an unprecedented lack of qualified and experienced workers, especially in the hotel and food industry, following the exodus of employees during the lockdown. Many never returned. As a result, an estimated 80,000 jobs are now needed.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Once the season is over, workers are entitled to only three months of unemployment benefit. When there\u2019s a cost-of-living<\/a> crisis, how are they expected to survive the rest of the year?”<\/p>\n

Greek Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni confirmed that tourism arrivals in January 2025 were already up by 10% compared to January 2024.<\/p>\n

She also said that tourism revenue rose by 3.5 billion euros in 2024 compared to before the pandemic, in 2019.<\/p>\n

Dimitris Stathokostopoulos, a restaurant owner in Athens, told The Guardian: “It\u2019s becoming harder and harder to find employees.<\/p>\n

“Tourism is definitely on the rise but these days Greeks prefer to work 9 to 5 office jobs that don\u2019t require putting in hours at night, or over the weekend.”<\/p>\n

The Goverment is reportedly seeking to recruit from abroad and encouraging expats to return to help fill these jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Summer 2025 is on track to set new records for tourism in Greece. According to INSETE\u2019s\u00a0Air Data Tracker,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3090],"tags":[51,1433,56213,1700,1450,13650,56211,49122,10238,16484,56212,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-127393","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-coronavirus","10":"tag-covid-19-impact","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-greece","13":"tag-greece-holidays","14":"tag-greece-tourism","15":"tag-hospitality-industry","16":"tag-hotels","17":"tag-job-market","18":"tag-labor-shortage","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114561610043948434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}