This popular European destination, a favourite among British tourists, is expected to follow in the footsteps of other countries planning to ban cruise ships in an effort to combat over-tourism.
Greece is considering imposing a cap on the number of cruise ships visiting the country’s most popular islands in an attempt to mitigate the damage caused by crowds of tourists, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an interview with Bloomberg released on Friday.
“I think we’ll do it next year,” Mitsotakis said, adding that new regulations could either restrict the total number of island berths or introduce a bidding process for slots. There are concerns, however, that the restrictions are unlikely to make a major dent in the tourism sector, with ships continuing to visit most islands, including Corfu, and many home-ported in Piraeus, near Athens.
According to the report, cruises generated nearly £715 million in revenue in 2023, more than double the figure of the previous year. In total, tourism accounts for a quarter of Greece’s economy, with record numbers of tourists travelling after the end of pandemic restrictions.
According to Bloomberg, the total number of visitors to Greece last year was 32.7 million, 18 percent higher than in 2022. Numbers were also up 25 percent in the first three months of this year.
However, Mitsotakis questioned whether the economic benefits of the cruise ship industry outweigh their environmental impact.
He highlighted the islands of Santorini and Mykonos, saying that they are the ones “that are clearly suffering”, and have become focal points in the debate. “Santorini is the most sensitive, Mykonos will be the second,” Mitsotakis noted.
In 2023, Santorini welcomed 800 cruise ships, disgorging 1.3 million people, a figure that was 17 percent higher than in 2022. The island has only 15,000 residents. Santorini was closely followed by Mykonos with 749, up 23 percent year on year.
“There are people spending a lot of money to be on Santorini and they don’t want the island to be swamped,” Mitsotakis said. “Plus the island can’t afford it, even in terms of security.”
In 2021, Italy banned large cruise ships from the canal leading into Venice. This year, Spain’s Valencia and Barcelona also threatened to limit, or even ban, mega cruise liners as the row over tourist saturation continues to spread across the country.
Valencia said that she wants to restrict the arrival from 2026, while Barcelona’s city council said it is negotiating with the city’s port to update the 2018 agreement to limit the mega ships. Both said the move was vital in order to control the number of people who flock to the city centre on a weekly basis, causing overcrowding and congestion. When multiple ships are docked at the same time, the numbers soar into their thousands.
Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, said he would not rule out eliminating some of the city’s seven terminals and limiting cruise ship arrivals, following in the footsteps of other European locations such as Amsterdam, Venice and Mallorca.