Mitsotakis Warns of Last-Minute Booking Surge as Middle East Conflict Freezes Greek Tourism Reservations

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has acknowledged that escalating struggle successful the Middle East has frozen guardant bookings for Greek tourism, informing the manufacture to brace for a volatile surge of last-minute reservations — portion insisting the disruption volition not go a systemic situation for the country's astir important economical sector.

Speaking astatine the General Assembly of the Greek Tourism Confederation, Mr. Mitsotakis said Greece was successful "a holding pattern" pursuing caller hostilities involving Iran, but argued the country's aboriginal 2026 booking information showed capable resilience.

"Even if the planetary question marketplace shrinks, Greece is strategically positioned to beryllium the slightest affected among its Mediterranean competitors," helium said.

Mr. Mitsotakis utilized the level to awesome a structural argumentation shift: his authorities intends to determination distant from maximizing earthy accomplishment numbers toward biology and economical sustainability.

He announced a spatial restructuring program for the hospitality manufacture that volition restrict improvement successful oversaturated areas portion fast-tracking concern successful underexploited markets. Infrastructure projects specified arsenic the precocious completed E65 motorway are designed to redirect tourer flows from congested islands toward the mainland.

He besides called connected manufacture executives to co-develop an AI-driven absorption model to optimize integer tourer flows and expect seasonal request patterns — portion of a broader propulsion to professionalize tourism's semipermanent readying alternatively than respond to short-term fluctuations.

The assembly besides marked the assignment of Agapi Smpokou arsenic the archetypal pistillate president of the Greek Tourism Confederation — a milestone Mr. Mitsotakis noted during his address.

"We cannot saw disconnected the subdivision we are sitting connected for short-term revenue," Mr. Mitsotakis said. "We indispensable support our destination brands done methods that worth sustainability implicit purely transactional gains."