Marios Trivizas, President General Pan-Hellenic Federation of Tourism Enterprises

Philoxenia 2013 greeting.

The international exhibition of Philoxenia is held during a time with mixed feelings on the progress of our country, the prosperity of its people and of course Greek tourism.

The latter has showed great progress in the past year, bringing reassurance and feelings of positive track for our economy.

The crisis in the Greek market, bringing down prices and lowering expectations for high margins by many, is reflected to our 2013 growth estimated to be over 15%.

The 29th Philoxenia stands as a major tourism Forum for all tourism enterprises to reflect on the past experiences and plan the future.

GEPOET, the secondary collective body of Travel Agencies & Coaches of the country, would like to thank all participants for taking part and express its gratitude to GTP for keeping the strong bonding among the members of the tourism sector.

2013 was the year of an exceptional boom from the Russian market, and shows how collective efforts of the government (expediting visa process) and the private sector, can help bring a new promising market to our country.

This lesson can be useful for other promising countries tourism wise, such as China and India, which show tremendous potential but still require additional efforts to be made by our country hopefully within 2014.

We wish everybody a peaceful and profitable year.