Much has been made about over tourism in the last few years, both globally and in Europe, but here in Greece the conversation is deafening and omnipresent in our daily lives. In politics and business, the debate over affordability and comfort versus economic growth is constantly raging, on social media posts about extreme overcrowding in popular island destinations routinely go viral, and in academic circles the LSE’s scathing “cafe economy” report was widely circulated.
Street Graffiti in Athens translating to “Airbnbs everywhere, neighbors nowhere!”
In a dilemma familiar to most, the government has attempted to navigate the difficult balance between economic interests and the corrosive effects of the industry. In this pursuit, it has portrayed itself as laissez-faire, while carefully imposing restrictions on new short-term rentals in the capital, as well as on cruise ships in islands, while also launching the “Mystreet” and “Mybeach” apps which are aimed at getting citizens to report any illegal flooding of streets and beaches by restaurants and businesses with seating and sunbeds.Naturally, while for many these measures represent much needed quality of life improvements, for others they represent needless restrictions on economic growth, and thus do little to stop the cacophony of the endless debate. This article however, is about a possible way Greece could sidestep this dilemma by taking cues from the Maldives on how to deliver economic growth while simultaneously alleviating the problems of its overstretched tourism destinations.
At first glance one wouldn’t think the Maldives, a country with a lower HDI than Iran and a GDP per capita just on the world average, has much to teach a developed European economy on the other side of the world. Look closer however, and you’ll see that despite the Maldivian economy’s undisputed over-reliance on the industry, you’d be hard pressed to find hollowed out city districts or a tourism induced affordability crisis before the recent rise of so-called “local” island tourism.
This is because of the country’s deliberate self-dissection between the pristine luxury resorts and beaches we all know it for, and the day-to-day reality of a middle-income economy in its main inhabited, or “local”, islands. The country successfully minimized trade-offs of affordability and cohabitation by concentrating the industry almost exclusively in its extremely small, barren, and otherwise economically unproductive islands. It is off the back of this model that the country has, even if imperfectly, massively outperformed and grown to dominate its regional peers in development statistics [4,5], having a GDP per capita double that of the richest Indian state, and triple that of Sri Lanka according to the world bank.
It’s not difficult to see Greece adopting such a model in parallel to its traditional one with the aim of offloading some of its yearly tourist demand to similar artificially created resort zones. The country has an incredible 6000 barren uninhabited islands, and while most are protected by strict environmental or cultural protection regulations (and rightfully so), there are hundreds of small, Eco systemically unimportant, islands of seemingly little social or economic value, many of which are simply sold to private individuals.
A state owned development corporation, or a land lease initiative seeking to transform these economically dormant islets could very well serve to more evenly distribute and absorb tourist demand between traditional overburdened areas, and new purpose-built paradises in the Aegean. Such an initiative would ease the burden islands and cities face, while also creating government rents which could be directed towards the country’s debt burden, areas ailing from over tourism, or even a Norway style sovereign wealth fund. Incredibly, even if the new facilities only serve to induce greater tourist demand rather than absorb that which already exists, its great profits could be directed to the areas desperately plagued by over tourism, ensuring that the program would still be a net positive for the country.
While at first some issues, such as infrastructure (eg: water scarcity), or the islands’ small size, may come to mind, we must remember that all these problems and more are easily dealt with by Maldives and other small island nations copying its model. The real problems Greece would face would come in the way of ensuring only islets of minimal natural value are used, as the point of this initiative is, after all, to reverse the degradation of the country’s natural inheritance, not further it. Another matter would be that labor and resource trade-offs would still persist, however it is unlikely that they wouldn’t anyway since the country’s annual tourist intake is only on track to grow to greater and greater record highs.
Strange as this idea may seem, the reality is that Greece, and indeed entire swathes of Europe, cannot afford to continue on their current trajectory. As the continent’s increasing competitiveness gap pushes it further and further to rely on tourism, it won’t be quotas, bans, entry fees, or moratoriums that will impede the downsides of the industry, but radical, creative, and unprecedented alterations in our tourism model.
This op-ed is part of To BHMA International Edition’s NextGen Corner, a platform for fresh voices on the defining issues of our time.
*Orpheas Afridi is a member of ELIAMEP’s EU Youth Hub, and is a British-Greek university student passionate about European, African, and global affairs in an unstable world.
