Sarah Ticherou

Meeting British locals

A vital part of our role at the Consulate is providing a service to the British who have settled here in Corfu. The British Embassy website provides information on living in Greece but this list is not exhaustive and we receive a wide range of enquiries on a daily basis. Some of these enquiries which come under the general heading of ‘ lifestyle’ are not things we can help with, but there are a whole range of other consular  services such as the paperwork for marriages or legalisation of documents which we do offer that a lot of folk are not aware of.

During the summer we are so busy dealing with the many consular cases involving people on holiday,  we don’t really have the chance to meet a lot of the British locals. I felt it was important to invite people into the Consulate on an informal occasion in order to meet more people but also to provide info on what we do. I’ve found since starting this job in May that there are also a lot of preconceptions around about what the role of Vice Consul involves. There is actually a day job in addition to turning up to represent HMG at ceremonial or social events! So with this in mind, we arranged a Christmas open day. Posters were put up in various locations on the hope that, if people were in Corfu Town, they would pop in for a few minutes for some mulled wine, a mince pie and a chat.

We had an excellent turnout and it proved to be an ideal opportunity to have a chat with a large number of the local Brits. It was nice getting to know people but also introduce a lot of the services we provide. There was curiosity about how I was appointed to this role which gave me a good opportunity to explain the Embassy and the FCO’s recruitment policy generally – nothing more complicated than appointing the best person for the job!  We were also pleased to discuss the changing face of consular work which I was only too happy to discuss. I think there was surprise at how pro-active Consular work has become- our funky Greece wide publicity campaign and close co-operation with British Tour Operators is not what people expect we do.

I enjoyed being able to take part in a social event; spending time chatting with local Brits to get their take on life in Corfu and offering support and advice in any way we can.

Posted at 15:44 19 December 2008 by Sarah Ticherou  |  Comments[2]

Youth Tourism....

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]