Greece's Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis met with his French counterpart Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne and with French tourism industry executives in Paris, over the weekend.
Theoharis and Lemoyne had the opportunity to analyse Greece's plan to restart tourism and discussed the importance of the EU's 'green' vaccination certificate.
"I had an excellent discussion with my French counterpart Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne. I presented to him the complete plan for the opening of Greek tourism and we agreed on the need to coordinate our actions and a common course at European level, aiming at the faster recovery of tourism. I am optimistic that we will have a dynamic flow of tourists from France this year, as our country has managed to sustain its brand name as a safe destination, while offering all those special elements that the French tourist market is looking for," Theoharis stated.
The Minister of Tourism also met with senior executives of airline Transavia. They informed Theoharis that Greece is currently the top destination in bookings, exceeding the demand for Spain and Portugal.
That is why Transavia has increased its 2021 capacity to Greece to 1,100,000 passenger seats.
The airline currently connects 4 French cities to 12 Greek destinations, while on Saturday the company announced three additional direct flights from Paris-Preveza, Nantes-Corfu and Montpelier-Santorini.
Speaking to French media outlet Tourmag, Theocharis stated that "we are sure that the demand for tourism in Greece will be massive. However, I must say that even in the most optimistic scenarios we will not return to the levels of 2019 and it will be, objectively, very difficult to compensate for all the losses. But 2021 will be a year of optimism for tourism. Greece continues to open up and will gradually reduce restrictions."
The Greek minister also mentioned that the 66th Meeting of the World Tourism Organization's (UNWTO) Commission for Europe will be held in Athens on June 2-4, under the auspices of the Greek government.
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