Hania sees its tourism suffer loss
Foreign arrivals at the airport of Hania in western Crete showed a 9.3 yearly drop in the March-August period this year, according to a survey by the Economic and Business Administration Department of the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Hania and the Financial Engineering Laboratory of Crete Polytechnic. The survey, which focused on the impact of the international economic crisis on Hania tourism, found that arrivals dropped from 437,358 last year to 402,911 this year. It also found that one-third of tourists (33.3 percent) reduced their spending during their stay in Hania prefecture due to the financial crisis. As for the purchase of local traditional products, some 21.1 percent of foreign tourists reported that they had reduced their spending in that direction, with 57.9 percent of British tourists in particular cutting this expenditure. There was also a decline in the use of rented cars and taxis by just over 20 percent, the survey found.
