EDITORIAL

Just a few days before the elections for the European Parliament all the parties are putting up a struggle to get a bigger piece of the people’s votes, but as it seems, without success. We hear them talking about great plans and great ideas for a powerful and prosperous nation. The truth is that we don’t want to be powerful and great. We live in a small country, we don’t have heavy industry or exports and we have only one, but strong national product, tourism. This national product that affects the lives of thousands of people in an economic level keeps degrading year after year. We were expecting a deduction in tourism of 20% for 2009 so now we’re satisfied that this deduction is limited to 10%
We shouldn’t be happy about this, we should be sad for not being able to zero it or even achieve positive results.
We are in the middle of an international crisis, that has its impact also in Greece but let’s face it we’ve been affected less than many other industrial countries. Maybe now is our chance to promote our national product more and in more affective ways compared to the past. And maybe is time that we evaluate differently a very important part of tourism, which is the conference tourism. Individually, people will make cut backs on their vacation, but organizations, associations, companies will continue to organize meetings and events as there’s a constant need for sharing new ideas, accomplishments and experiences.

We promote the model “sun and sea” abroad but this is not enough. We need to get a bigger share of the conference tourism and to accomplish this, several things must be done. We don’t need to hear big talks from the politicians any more, they’ll get our attention more effectively if we start seeing things get done for a change. We need a national convention bureau to attract big conferences and even though the facilities exist, nothing is happening. We need a national CVB which will be able to promote our country’s conference venues, more effectively. We need to secure the PCO’S profession so everyone doing this job will be certified and we need a unified financial policy in order to avoid different charges for the same services. These things can be done immediately and without great cost. Faith for the politicians can only be restored through acts and measures and maybe it’s time for everyone to give it a second thought.