The tourist season on the island of Rhodes has started with the best prospects and according to all estimates it will develop very dynamically in the coming months with a corresponding boost to the local economy.
«We expect very positive results from almost all tourist markets and we take it for granted that tourist arrivals this year will be increased,» says the president of the Dodecanese Tourist Office Association Christos Michalakis in a statement to APE-MPA.
Already since the weekend there has been a sharp increase in charter flights and the traffic is set to skyrocket as, since this is the time when mass tourist arrivals were scheduled to begin and would effectively be the start of the tourist season which is mainly attributed to the Catholic Easter.
But the tourist traffic will increase even more, says Mr Michalakis, since from 1 to 7 April the number of charter flights almost doubles. According to the data, 122 charter flights from various countries are expected to land in Rhodes during that period, increasing the tourist traffic even more, while until the 10th of the month most of the hotels that have not yet opened are expected to open, in order to accommodate the tourists who are beginning to arrive en masse on the island.
«The season according to what we have seen so far will be very good and will last at least until mid-November,» says Dionysios Tsiligiris, general director of the Rhodes Tourism Promotion Organisation, to APE-MPA.
There is an increase in bookings from almost all tourist markets which is particularly important as Mr.Tsiligiris points out while a significant number of Turkish tourists are going to visit the island of Rhodes and the other islands of the Dodecanese under the recent agreement for a seven-day visa.
Increased traffic is expected from England, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Czech Republic, while a pleasant surprise is the Israeli market, which is starting well but no one knows how it will evolve.
It is also noteworthy, as Mr.Tsiligiris points out, that from Germany there is a «numbness» in bookings due to the economic crisis, but there is optimism that things will develop well in the future.
The problem that exists is that of lack of staff that plagues most tourism businesses says Mr.Tsiligiris noting that every effort is being made to address it.
His optimism was recently expressed in statements and the president of the Rhodes Hoteliers Association John Papavassiliou stressing that this year's tourist season on our island will be positive and even according to his estimates the traffic will record an increase that will reach even 5% which means that we are going for a new record breaking every previous performance.
