Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis introduced “Restart Tourism,” Greece’s new campaign for the 2020 season, at Zappeion Hall on Thursday with a short promotional video targeting a foreign audience.
After months of strict measures and a lockdown against the novel coronavirus that turned out to be a success story for Greece with less than 3,000 recorded cases and a total of 180 fatalities until today, the country is said to be ready to open its borders to international visitors.
The government’s target is to focus on three main factors — to keep workers healthy, to be able to deal effectively with any coronavirus cases, especially in the islands, and to be able to protect the jobs of people working in the tourism sector.
“WE CANNOT CLOSE THE TOURIST SEASON”
“We do need tourism. We cannot close the tourist season. However, we will have cases coming from aboard,” Nikolaos Sipsas, a professor of infectious diseases, said in an interview with Antenna TV.
Tourism, a sector the Greek economy is tied to in multiple ways, could not be exempted from this gradual reopening, Mitsotakis said today during the launch of the tourism campaign.
“Tourists will come to a Greece that is the same but at the same time different. They will have to observe the basic hygiene protocols invariably. The protection of public health and the safety of visitors and workers in tourism remain our top non-negotiable priority. It is to our advantage that in the summer, we will be in open air, where specialists say that the possibilities of contagion are significantly reduced,” said Mitsotakis.