Tourism in Greece

The launch of the tourism season on the island of Corfu was inaugurated on Sunday, March 26 with an easyJet flight from Belfast that landed at Ioannis Kapodistrias Airport at about 11.30 a.m.

Nine flights followed, starting at 3 p.m. from the UK, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Belgium.

Lale Alatli fell in love with Greece through rebetiko music. She listened to it with her Greek fellow students while they were studying in Italy. She copied CDs and tapes and by studying the lyrics she started to learn Greek. But in Turkey, where she comes from, she could not find anything Greek at that time. "It was like there was an invisible wall between the two countries," she recalls.

The European Court of Justice has once again condemned Greece over its environmental performance, and Thessaloniki more specifically over its air quality.

The court on Thursday found very high levels of microparticles in the air of the northern city, which Greece has failed to tackle over the last decade. 

For every 100 students enrolled at Greek universities each year, just 52 graduate, according to the latest report by the Hellenic Authority for Higher Education (HAHE) for 2022, which also saw graduation rates dropping steadily through the economic crisis, from 10% in 2013 to 8.6% in 2020, against a European Union average of 23.2%.

The Central Archaeological Council is on the cusp of completing the candidacy file for the inclusion of Crete's Minoan-era ancient palaces of Zakros, Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, Zominthos and Kydonia in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will attend the annual silent memorial march for Holocaust victims in the northern port city of Thessaloniki on Sunday. 

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the first train conveying Jewish inhabitants of Thessaloniki to Nazi execution camps, where an estimated 50,000 Thessaloniki Jews were slaughtered. 

The re-prohibition of access to the "Navagio" beach of Zakynthos was proposed by the Anti-Seismic Planning and Protection Organization (OASP), in the context of its reassessments regarding seismic activity and landslide phenomena.

The first indications on the course of this year's tourism season in Greece from the international tourism exhibition ITB Berlin 2023 are particularly encouraging.

The major tour operators are reporting booking levels at Greek destinations for this summer that in some cases have even reached 50% of their available packages.

"What did I do? I didn't do anything. I just wanted to help the girl, who was wet and tired." That is how Militsa (Emilia) Kamvisi had described her spontaneous decision to bottle-feeding the baby of a young Syrian woman who had just landed on the shores of Lesvos in the eastern Aegean after making the treacherous crossing from Turkey in October 2015.

As part of the ongoing effort to upgrade public spaces in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, local authorities have begun coordinated actions to remove mopeds and motorcycles that have been abandoned on streets and sidewalks not only in the center but in all neighborhoods.