Oia, Greece – As the legendary Greek summer season draws to a close, visitors flock to the small whitewashed streets of one of the country’s most iconic destinations: the island of Santorini.
Tourism is a vital part of the Greek economy, accounting for around 25 percent of it, and 90 percent of Santorini’s economy depends on selfie-wielding visitors.
It has become a double-edged sword for Santorini since the island’s 15,000 inhabitants can welcome up to two million visitors per year. Signs placed around Santorini villages remind tourists to respect houses and holy sites.
George Sarelakos, founder and president of Aegean Rebreath, an organization working to protect the marine environment, told Al Jazeera that the high number of visitors also posed a growing environmental risk for Santorini, especially given the lack of drinking water from the tap on the island.
“You can imagine all these thousands of tourists on the islands buying one or two bottles of water a day. We’re talking about a crazy amount of plastic that ends up at the bottom of the sea,” he said.
“Not viable”
Aegean Rebreath has undertaken activities such as encouraging recycling on board many of the luxury yachts that dock on the island and has organized harbor cleaning activities.
“I won’t forget the expression on the tourists’ faces when they saw a ton of marine debris coming out of the port,” Sarelakos said.
He said finding solutions for clean tap water was essential to making the island more sustainable.
“We truly believe, as Aegean Rebreath, that the path taken by Santorini and other islands of Greece is not viable,” Sarelakos said.
With many Greeks income only around 800 euros ($857) per month, rising costs have also meant that some are excluded from popular tourist destinations with the average price for a hotel in Santorini being around 150 euros ($160).
Beach piracy
Paros, a Cycladic neighbor of Santorini which has a total of 12,000 permanent residents, saw 560,479 ferry arrivals in 2021 and has also given renewed attention to tourist attendance.
This summer, locals protested against swarms of private deckchairs and umbrellas taking up large stretches of sand and charging around 100 euros each, leaving no space for others to use the beach.
Some businesses obtained permits to use the beach, but residents pointed out that they often began setting up lounge chairs well beyond the agreed limits, meaning others could not put their towels on the sand .
Christos Georgousis, a retired teacher and permanent resident of Paros, said locals were tired of the continued occupation of stretches of sand by expensive deck chairs.
“Without rules we cannot live. And these rules seemed to have been flouted by the beach pirates,” he said, adding that the protests had so far been largely successful.
He said arrests were made and action was taken by residents’ protest power with a Facebook group dedicated to “Save the beaches of Paros”, consisting of more than 12,000 members.
Key workers in difficulty
Paris Tsartas, professor of tourism development at Harokopio University in Athens, told Al Jazeera that the problem of “overtourism” was particular to a number of oversaturated destinations such as Santorini and Mykonos, posing problems especially for key workers such as doctors who often had difficulty finding accommodation.
“The rents are exorbitant. And this is of course linked to overtourism. So they prefer to rent their houses to tourists, and not to people involved in all these very vital sectors,” he said.
Tsartas said he expected overtourism to become an even bigger problem in the next five to 10 years.
Meanwhile, Greece is expecting another bumper year for tourism.
Data from MarineTraffic, a ship tracking platform, revealed that Mykonos welcomed 209 cruise ships from June to August this year, an increase of 35% compared to last year during the same period. June peaked with 72 arrivals.
Meanwhile, Santorini saw 203 ships, with July leading the way with 74 arrivals.
Georgios Hatzimanolis, head of global communications at Kpler, which owns MarineTraffic, told Al Jazeera that this summer Mykonos averaged two cruise ships per day with peaks of six.
“This means that potentially 14,000 passengers could flood the small island in a single day,” he said, warning that the island’s “already strained infrastructure” could buckle under the pressure.
“The rise of cruise tourism is not only an environmental concern but also threatens to tarnish Mykonos’ luxury reputation.”
Protect the Acropolis
Efforts are already being made to combat some of the potential harms of mass tourism.
At the Acropolis, the country’s most iconic monument, there are plans to limit the number of visitors to 20,000 per day with a timed ticketing system to combat overcrowding and protect the historic site.
“Obviously, tourism is desirable for the country, for all of us. But we need to figure out how excessive tourism will not harm the monument,” said Lina Mendoni, Greece’s culture minister.
Authorities have already declared that tackling overtourism is a “top priority”.
Tsartas said authorities had stepped up efforts to tackle the problem, including launching campaigns encouraging people to visit other parts of Greece and throughout the year rather than just the summer months. the most loaded.
Some measures already taken, such as some destinations creating their own organizations to deal with tourism, have improved the situation, he said.
“But the fact is we should have had them 20 years ago,” Tsartas added.
