Two years on from the Olympic Games - Athens has seen hotel occupancy and rates rise, as visitor numbers to the city continue to grow. This is the good news. Athens is bucking the post-Olympic gloom experienced by Sydney.


A review of hotel performance based on the HotelBenchmark™ Survey by Deloitte shows hotel occupancy in Athens has risen by 7.9% for the first seven months of 2006, up from 61.6% over the same period in 2005. Occupancy is now at 66.5%, compared to 58.3% in the seven months leading up to the games (Jan-July 2004). Rates have also firmed-up with an upward trend in revenue per available room (revPAR). RevPAR for the first seven months of 2006 is now €88, ahead of competitor cities such as Lisbon (€58) and Madrid (€82).

Commenting, Alex Kyriakidis, Global Leader of Tourism Hospitality & Leisure at Deloitte said: "The games gave Athens the opportunity to improve its image and reinvent itself to be one of the great European capitals. Our analysis shows this has had a positive impact on long-term hotel performance.

However, Deloitte's analysis of the future of the tourism and hospitality industries shows that Greece must re-invent itself in order to continue to grow it's tourism in response to the of the drivers of change in the global tourism industry and in the wake of fierce competition for the traveller from destinations that were not on the tourism map five years ago, such as Dubai.

Kyriakidis says: "Our analysis shows that, over the next five years, four major drivers of change will sweep through the tourism industry – the importance of brand, the impact of emerging markets such as China, India and the Gulf States, the generation phenomenon and information technology. Greece's tourism strategy must be adapted to respond to these trends. Failure to do so will leave Greece in the "sun and sea" bucket, fighting for a share of mass-market travellers who have little or no loyalty to a destination. Results over the past five years are testimony to Greece falling behind its primary competitors – over the six years from 2000 to 2005, Greece's tourism visitation grew by only 3% compared with 150% for Spain, 210% for Turkey and 12% for Portugal. Even Egypt managed a 53% growth despite several terrorist attacks"

The Deloitte "Hospitality 2010 – a five year wake-up call" study shows that, increasingly, travellers are becoming brand conscious and are looking for experience-based as opposed to product-based travel for business and pleasure. This is at the heart of emerging tourism destinations such as Dubai where every conceivable experience is on offer to the visitor from sun and sea to shopping malls to snow skiing. In addition, emerging markets are focusing on residential tourism as a means of extending the peak season – a market that Greece has yet to capture, despite the perceived safer status of Greece and its EU membership. From a demographic standpoint, the "silver" market (matures and baby boomers) is living longer, is more active than ever before, is no longer content with sun and sea and will not tolerate being marginalised by the travel industry – with 70% of the wealth in the USA owned by the over 50 year olds, they are a major target for the industry.

Kyriakidis said: "Time is running out for Greece to implement a fundamental change in its tourism strategy and work with the industry and investors to make it happen. The starting point is to identify the range of experiences that compliment the natural beauty of Greece and leverage its greatest asset – the warm and friendly nature of the Greek people. The Government must then provide the incentives for investors and operators to deliver them and - above all - bring the planning and approval processes together to expedite implementation. Complacency will result in major loss of Greece's existing market. With projected tourism growth by Greece's competitors in the double-digit territory, the post Olympic race is very much still on."