One of the first things that struck me when I started was the amount of proactive work involved in this role. It wasn’t a case of just waiting for incidents to occur and then dealing with everything that comes with them; the Embassy and the vice-consuls from around the Greek network are actively working to reduce the amount of incidents before they happen. An example of this is the focus on Youth Tourism. Of the 3 million travellers to Greece last year, 30% were Youth. And 53% of all consular incidents happened to youth tourists.
The Youth Tourism Conference that was held at the British Embassy in Athens back in February brought together Mayors from the youth resorts, police, tour operators and key people from the Ministry of Tourism. It was a chance to get together to discuss the main issues and come up with tangible action points that could be worked on during the summer. These included issues such as drink quality, policing, and infrastructure – anything that would make the holidays ‘safer’ for the youth tourists.
On an island level this involves establishing close relationships with the local authorities and tour operators. Bringing everyone together to discuss resort-specific issues and agreeing actions can sometimes prove difficult. We are now at the busiest time of the year and everyone is juggling a hundred balls! But once points have been agreed and then seeing things take shape does make me feel we are contributing to making someone’s holiday that little bit more trouble-free.
Posted at 09:04 20 August 2008 by Sarah Ticherou | Comments[0]
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