Greek Tourism Body Proposes Actions to Ease Energy Crisis

Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) President Yiannis Retsos.

In view of what many expect to be a hard winter ahead, the Greek Tourism Confederation (SETE) proposed a set of measures to help sector businesses deal with soaring energy costs.

Despite forecasts for an estimated 20 billion euros in tourism revenues by the end of 2022, “we must not ignore that the geopolitical, but also the international financial situation are increasingly creating uncertainty and threatening the present and future of tourism businesses”, said SETE in a statement.

“Due to the huge, unmanageable, increase in energy costs, the coming months are expected to be particularly difficult, especially for those tourism businesses that will continue to operate past October, when the tourist season traditionally ends,” it said.

In this direction, SETE tabled the following three proposals to the ministries of tourism and environment and energy for discussion.

The proposals

To move ahead with the immediate opening of the energy savings “Exoikonomo” program for businesses for energy upgrades of facilities. SETE underlined that short-term accommodation rentals and illegally operating accommodation facilities have already made use of the program (as homes) due to the unclear legal framework still in force and the absence of regulation. Depriving legitimate tourist accommodation businesses of this opportunity further increases the unfair competition they face, SETE said.

The confederation also suggests providing tourism business owners with incentives to produce their own energy with the use of photovoltaic systems (net-metering). It goes on to add that  this requires to immediately strengthen existing network infrastructure so that it can accommodate greater loads and to allow businesses to install photovoltaic systems in areas not adjacent to their facilities.

Lastly, SETE proposes subsidizing heating oil for tourist accommodation businesses located above an altitude of 300m such as Drama, Kastoria, Kozani, Florina, where heating needs begin much earlier: from mid-September and last until May. According to SETE, a 20-room hotel at an altitude of +600m consumes annually on average 20-30 tons of heating oil.