from the Irish Times
With
increasing multinational hotel chains, minimal consideration has been
paid to the impact on landscape, history, culture, or the lives of
people
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Richard Pine
Tue Jan 23 2024 - 05:00
It is official at last. Parts of Greece,
including the islands of Santorini, Mykonos, Corfu and Zakynthos, were
last month designated as “saturated” as far as over-building is
concerned.
A
new Spatial Planning Framework divides the country into five zones,
based on saturation levels and sets development limits. Also included in
the “red” zone are parts of Crete, Rhodes, Kos and Tinos. In addition
to the red “saturated-controlled” areas, there are blue zones which are
“developed” but not yet saturated, light-blue (“developing”), green
(“mild development-supported”) and grey (zoned for “special selective
support”, whatever that may mean).
There
is no question of banning building in the saturated zones, and there is
some ambiguity about what will be permitted. The emphasis seems to be
on high-grade hotels with plenty of ambient land. Cynics would say that
the momentum towards large-scale developments will turn the designated
blue, green and grey areas into red ones.
The
entire planning – or lack of it – in Greek tourism is, indeed, a grey
area. Illegal building, tax avoidance and tax incentives, the “fakelaki”
or “little envelope” to facilitate planning applications, have made a
mockery of good intentions.
The
minister of tourism. Olga Kefalogianni, has said that the aim of the
five-zone plan is to “create conditions for a more sustainable tourism
product”. Sceptics would say that we have heard all of that from many of
her predecessors.
“Product”
puts the emphasis on the conveyor-belt aspect of business, rather than a
skills- or people-based experience. Niche markets for a more
“discriminating” clientele, such as skiing, wine and food culture, or
mountain-walking, have remained just that: minority pursuits with little
or no planned investment incentive or other forms of encouragement.
Despite
the undeniable fact that tourism is Greece’s biggest industry (in terms
of income generated and the size of the workforce), an almost total
lack of national planning has created conditions in which a free market
has been allowed free play. With the increasing trend towards foreign
investment from multinational hotel chains, minimal consideration has
been paid to the impact on the raw material: landscape, history and
culture, or the everyday lives of ordinary folk.
In 2018 the then mayor of Santorini,
Nikolaos Zorzos, warned: “If we do not do anything, the success will
return as a boomerang against us. So we have to see what we can do to
protect and preserve our uniqueness. The challenges we face are many. We
are an island with urban problems.”
With
increased leisure and cheaper air travel, mass tourism was going to
happen anyway, but in Greece, as elsewhere, tourism is being strangled
by its own success.
On
the tiny island of Ios, people who are struggling to ensure that the
island remains viable for small businesses have warned that favouring
large-scale developments will not only push smaller operators out of the
market but will damage the environment on which the attraction of
tourism depends, especially with the exponential growth in marinas and
the damage they can cause to marine biology.
It
is not only the Greek islands that are experiencing saturation. A
special report on Athens by Kathimerini newspaper last month
acknowledged that Airbnb had been hugely beneficial for households
struggling in the wake of the economic crisis, but has led to “entire
neighbourhoods overrun with tourists dragging their luggage from one
apartment building to the next”.
A
Grant Thornton study showed that such rentals account for 14 per cent
of all Greek tourism. Measures have been announced to bring the Airbnb
industry more effectively within the tax net, but this does not solve
the problem for students, since the price increase has pushed it beyond
their reach.
While
the government struggles to achieve a balance in this type of
accommodation, Kathimerini wryly points out that “until all this becomes
law, there is widespread mistrust, because tourism is regarded as the
golden goose of the Greek economy, and you don’t mess with the golden
goose”. In Athens, as in many other smaller cities, and particularly on
the favourite islands for tourists, the fabric of social life and the
quality of that life for its residents has been imperilled by worship at
this shrine of the golden goose.
[ Greece Letter: spiralling cost of traditional holiday locations makes Greeks strangers in their own land ]
The
anguish local residents feel at the way their areas are becoming
magnets for tourists is palpable. When I recently wrote about the
situation in Corfu, where I live, people spoke to me in the street to
thank me for voicing their fears and anxieties. One owner of a
traditional craftshop (the type which is being squeezed out by
exorbitant rents and replaced with trendy coffee bars) said: “We have no
way of saying these things. Not even at the ballot box, because we
cannot trust the politicians.”
