Panic in Greece as mayor orders one factor to avoid wasting island with too many vacationers

A concerned mayor has tried to stop a tourism sport popular with Brits from being overrun.

Mayor of Santorini, Nikos Zorzos, has called for urgent action to try and prevent further construction on the island.

Santorini is Greece’s most popular tourist destination. That’s in a country with partygoers visiting Malia and Zante and historically-minded tourists fascinated by Athens.

But the 3.4 million who visit Santorini visit every year vastly outnumbers the 25,000 local to the island, which includes the towns of Fira and Oia.

Zorzos says the construction risks harming the landscape and could actually have an impact on the number of people who visit the island every year, a key part of the local economy.

He told the Guardian: “We live in a place of barely 25,000 souls and we don’t need any more hotels or any more rented rooms.

“If you destroy the landscape, one as rich as ours, you destroy the very reason people come here in the first place.”

Concrete already straddles around one fifth of the island, infuriating the likes of environmentalists. Many local experts believe that the island does not need any more hotels.

There are around 80,000 hotel beds on the island and officials in Athens approve even more building permits between 2018 and 2022.

“The environment is our home and destroying it we harm ourselves,” he said. “We should know from the past: no ancient civilisation that respected beauty ever declined.”

According to a YouGove poll released in January this year, Greece is the second most popular destination abroad for Brits. The only countries more popular are Spain and the staycations in the UK.

Of the destinations listed in the poll, 8% of Brits favoured Greece, compared to 15% who said they would prefer Spain. A total of 17% put the UK as its first choice.

A quarter of Brits who answer the survey said a “value score” of 25 was fitting for Greece. That is significantly better than the UK, which scored just eight. Spain scored 31.

YouGov said: “Despite these grumbles, the UK does quite well on the Satisfaction metric. Nearly as many Britons (53) say they are satisfied visitors of the UK as of Spain (55). Greece, which may attract fewer overall visitors, scored 34.2 on this metric.

“Spain also leads in Quality, with a score of 27 compared to 24 for the UK and 22 for Greece.

“More Britons plan to visit the UK, Spain, and Greece than any other destination tracked by YouGov. While Britons have comparable perceptions of the quality of these three destinations, they set them apart on other metrics. For example, Britons have less positive feeling towards their home country than either Spain or Greece. They also rate continental destinations as providing far better value for money.”

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