Greek tourism operators are facing with calm and scepticism the next parts of the cessation of operations of FTI, the third largest tour operator in Europe, a development that initially "numbed" the domestic tourism scene.

According to the ANA news agency, the arrows of the current crisis may have directly hit a small but not negligible number of hoteliers who worked with him, but in the long term, there are concerns about the new landscape that is taking shape in the European Tour Operators, which supply Greece with foreign visitors.

The region most exposed by the unfavorable development in FTI is Crete, with Emmanuel Tsakalakis, president of the Rethymno hoteliers and president of the Association of hoteliers of Crete, stressing to RES-MPA that 70% of the program of this tour operator concerned Crete. A 20% was related to Rhodes and a remaining 10% to other regions of the country, he stressed. In absolute numbers, the financial wound for Cretan hoteliers amounts to €800,000. 

As far as visitor arrivals via FTI in Crete are concerned, this year they are estimated at 85,000 and are naturally up in the air. Of course, Mr. Tsakalakis predicts that 50% of these tourists will eventually travel to Crete because large tour operators will already be carrying out the aforementioned project, which FTI canceled. What is certain, however, is that 40,000 visitors will be missing from the island this year, notes Mr. Tsakalakis, who focuses on the new data resulting from the bankruptcy of FTI. Already, the remaining 4 major tour operators in Europe have pressed the hoteliers of Crete for discounts on the packages of existing bookings, which involved FTI customers and their visit to the island.

Going a step further, Mr. Tsakalakis mentioned the monopolistic situations that will result from a major player leaving the tourism industry, which, he explained, do not favor competition. The result of this development, as Mr Tsakalakis believes, will be pressure on hoteliers for lower prices in the packages offered. In his intervention to the APPE-MPA, Mr. Tsakalakis asks when the hotelier will pull the chestnuts out of the fire, recalling that the wounds from the bankruptcy of Mouzenidis and Thomas Cook are still open from the past.

In the same vein, the statement of the president of the hotel association, Alexandros Vasilikos, notes that not every time the treatment of such problems can be left solely to the philanthropy of the hotelier, who suffers the financial loss. A European legislative umbrella must be created immediately, which will allow Member States to intervene to protect the rights of consumers, visitors, and hoteliers. Now, for this particular case, we are working with the Ministry of Tourism and the government to explore how the financial losses for our member hoteliers can be mitigated, he said.