Santorini’s whitewashed streets are teeming with hundreds of thousands of holiday makers this summer, but not everyone on the Greek island might be blissful to see the sight.
“Tourism is destroying the vineyards,” wine producer Matthew Argyros said in an interview. “I’m raising a red flag for the island.” His family winery, founded in 1903, produces a few quarter of the island’s vineyards, and he warns that agricultural land prices in the world have skyrocketed as developers clamor for space to construct more holiday homes.
Santorini’s grape production has declined by almost 50% over the past 20 years, a mean of two.7% per yr, based on data from the Santorini Winegrowers’ Association. According to the island’s winegrowers, production is liable to falling to zero by 2041 unless some form of intervention is made. Water shortages make growing grapes difficult, and the island has lost most of its staff to the tourism industry over time, Argyros said.
From her balcony within the mountain village of Pyrgos, Antonia Noussia could once see the vines growing all of the method to the coast. Today, she says, “only small vineyards remain.”
“You see people carrying bedsheets and breakfast items and it doesn’t feel like an inhabited village,” says Noussia, an associate professor of town planning and concrete design at London South Bank University, who lives half the yr on the island where she spent all her summers as a toddler. When the tourists disappear in winter, locals depend on a single small food market.
Since the pandemic, tourism has increased across Europe, exacerbating supply problems, congested roads and economic imbalances in several hotspots like Santorini. Some places try to ease the pressure with visitor fees, caps and even temporary bans – with limited success as a record summer begins.
“It’s going to be a very bad year for Santorini,” says Mayor Nikos Zorzos. The island cannot afford “a single bed more” for accommodation, he added – stressing that this might be the case even when infrastructure is improved to assist the island deal with higher numbers. The municipality is unable to implement a constructing ban, so he wants the Athens government to intervene.
Santorini is expecting 3.4 million tourists this summer, although local authorities have been calling for limits since 2012, Zorzos said.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has acknowledged that the region suffers from an issue of “overtourism.” In June, he announced plans to limit cruise ships on the country’s hottest islands. “I think we will do it next year,” Mitsotakis said in a interview by the point.
The recent rules could include limiting the full variety of island berths or introducing a tendering process for the berths. It is the newest proposal to limit day-trippers from cruise ships.
Zorzos had previously imposed a cap of 8,000 cruise guests per day, but this was lifted throughout the pandemic and recently reinstated, so the general impact on tourist numbers is unclear. Santorini’s local authorities have also managed to cut back the variety of days each cruise ship can visit the islands from 63 to 48 for this season – a number that is about to drop even further next yr.
The Greek central government can also be attempting to impose restrictions on short-term rentals in metropolitan areas, including a lot of the top destinations within the Aegean and Ionian Islands. The government has drafted a law, currently being discussed publicly, that will link the extent of short-term rentals to the variety of hotels available within the region.
The European Commission has recognized the issues on the islands, saying in a 2018 report that visitors bring 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) to Santorini annually and increase the population to as high as 107.8 tourists per 100 inhabitants. Some of the negative impacts “have lasting consequences for the island and its community,” the report’s authors write.
Summer protests
This opinion is shared by other communities living near Europe’s most vital tourist attractions. Venice has introduced an entrance fee and enormous and loud groups were banned from entering. In the Spanish holiday areas of Mallorca and the Canary Islands, locals protested to present visitors back their freedom. Barcelona has also turn into a spotlight of anger over tourism displacing locals.
Some have taken emergency measures after local infrastructure collapsed under the pressure. In late June, the mayor of the Italian island of Capri announced a ban on tourists entering the country attributable to a severe water shortage – however the measure was relaxed inside a day after water supplies were restored, based on Local media.
“The problem is not limited to just a few islands and it definitely does not only affect Greece,” said Ioannis Spilanis, assistant professor on the University of the Aegean. “The problem has been more than obvious since at least 2018, then the pandemic came and we forgot about it and rushed to restart travel and tourism to make up for the damage.”
In the summer of 2023, Greeks reclaimed the beaches from sunbeds and beach bars. The protest is often called the “towel movement”. The government has imposed stricter rules on the usage of the beaches and ensured that these are respected through regular inspections. In Greece, all beaches are freely accessible by law and can’t be private.
The stakes are high for the Greek economy. After greater than a decade of austerity following the financial crisis, GDP continues to be much lower than it was before 2008. One vivid spot is tourism, which has broken pre-pandemic records and can account for nearly a fifth of economic output in 2023, based on the World Travel and Tourism Council.
According to the Bank of Greece, the country attracted 32.7 million tourists in 2023, 18% greater than the previous yr, while the primary quarter of 2024 brought almost 25% more visitors than the identical period last yr.
Sites in danger
Meanwhile, the pressure continues to mount in some places. A number of islands away from Santorini, in the favored beach resort of Serifos, Mayor Konstantinos Revinthis said that no restaurants could be open from December to February. “Nothing is open for the locals on Serifos anymore,” he said.
Serifos, together with Folegandros and Sifnos, made it onto the list of Europe’s most endangered sites this yr, compiled by the heritage conservation group Europa Nostra, which cited “unrestrained construction” and the destruction of natural resources. Forest fires break out in July, while the heatwave in Greece continues to be smoldering.
Revinthis said “tourists will be in for a nasty surprise this year due to the water shortage” and must also prepare for worsening traffic congestion that might cause them to miss their ferry departure time. “They need to know that they will not be able to shower unless there is an immediate solution.”
