In 2020, the Year Journey Stopped, Greece Safely and securely Welcomed Website visitors | food stuff & travel , tourism

BRUSSELS – In accordance to a evaluation of the 12 months by the European Journey Agent and Tour Operator Affiliation (ECTAA), 2020 is the most catastrophic year in the record of vacation. With an typical of -80% of turnover, the benefit of the functions will barely arrive at 40 billion euros in 2020, as opposed with the 175 billion euros in 2019. Journey has been designed difficult because of to closure of borders and subsequent uncoordinated, contradictory and unstable travel limits, discouraging probable consumers to journey and vacation providers to start up once again.

The liquidity crunch of the provider suppliers (airlines, inns, functions, etcetera.) was passed on to tour operators and vacation brokers, who in turn ended up unable to refund their customers and issued vouchers. In December 2020, an estimated 7 billion euros are even now to be reimbursed by airways to the oblique distribution. In absence of gross sales because of to the journey constraints and health and fitness actions, lots of businesses have been required to minimize their team, using short term unemployment techniques or laying off staff.

Explained Pawel Niewiadomski, President of ECTAA, “From all countries we receive the same details: in spite of all the efforts created by corporations and their team and regardless of the general public assist supplied to the marketplace, many corporations may perhaps not get well. This has in no way been seen in advance of! Continual support measures are desired for the journey and tourism business, which is the market most adversely strike by the pandemic.”

In this context, coordination and joint initiatives aimed at supporting the restart of vacation and tourism are important. As ECTAA Desired Desired destination for 2020, the Greek National Tourism Business brought an a must have contribution to restore customer self confidence and open up tourism up for business enterprise.

Given that June, Greek authorities and Greek vacation corporations have been speaking in a crystal clear way with the market and customers and utilizing rigid wellness and basic safety protocols. Thanks to very well-formed guidelines, Greece, despite all the troubles, has managed to properly welcome visitors.

“The attribution of the World’s Main Tourism Board 2020 title by the Planet Vacation Awards is fair reward for the good quality of the do the job performed by Greece in the course of the last months and demonstrates the profitable opening of Greece to tourism for the duration of the pandemic” reported Eric Drésin, Secretary Typical of ECTAA.

He added, “ECTAA values the outstanding cooperation with the GNTO which has made it achievable for our users to market Greece in the summer.”

About ECTAA

ECTAA represents some 70,000 vacation agents and tour operators in Europe, which supply consultancy and provide transport, accommodation, leisure and other tourism solutions as properly as put together solutions to leisure and enterprise clients.