New drive will aim to attract more tourists
The government yesterday announced plans to boost tourist revenues over the next decade while introducing new services for foreign visitors to the country. Addressing a parliamentary committee on production and trade, Tourism Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos promised to appoint a tourist’s ombudsman to handle complaints from visitors, to set up a hot line that will provide information in six languages and to step up market inspections for profiteering. Avramopoulos accused the previous, Socialist government of having done little to boost tourist arrivals ahead of the August Olympics, and promised to launch a new advertising campaign to that purpose. He also announced that the government aims to bring tourist arrivals up to 19.5 million a year (from the current 13 million) over the next decade, while raising tourist revenues to 34 percent of GDP.