Every year millions of people will visit a number of countries for their summer vocations. European, American and Asian, mainly tourists will pack their bags and seek sea, sun and long beaches to relax, in a number of countries. In Greece for example, tourism is big business. The country’s history, natural beauty, large unspoiled countryside and of course, climate make it an ideal destination for those who wish to put some distance between the worries of work and their annual leave.  There is something for everyone, for the culture seeker, to the sun lounger, to the all-inclusive resident.  For the next however long you are on Greek time.     

Last year the country was visited by approximately 30 million tourists, 3 million of whom come from the UK. This is not simply a pleasure trip; it is a multi-billion dollar industry, involving tour operators, airlines, hotels, catering, tour-guides, car rentals and so many more industries. They all try to acquire the tourist dollar in the pursuit of happiness; in Greece alone the tourist contributions last year came somewhere near to 14 billion euros and provide 17% of the country’s jobs.

In this context, tourism is a wonderful social activity that allows people from different cultures to come together, try new things and perspectives. Most importantly to get some tan, so people in the office know we were away, get some tacky t-shirts and a bottle of suspiciously strong local drink which tasted like ambrosia whilst on holiday.  Some of us will learn to pronounce (badly) places we have never heard of, while others will
be reading questionable novels about romance, mystery or drama.  Others will bag a romance, maybe a venereal disease, heartbreak (especially if the previous is confirmed) or even the love of their life.  All these and many more will happen this summer and every summer since the wave of mass tourism began.   

 During this season and every season, countless people will prepare meals, clean rooms, and serve cold drinks on the sinking sand, paid minimum wage and rely heavily on the few tips left behind. The work hours are excruciatingly long, over 8 hours in the baking sun in some cases, without a hat, protection or even a break.  If this was a mine it would have been the one I read about in Herodotus, where the Athenians were sent to as slaves.  In the back of the house an army of trainee cooks, warehouse staff and cleaners will slave away without tips or recognition.  In their ranks, there is a number of unrecorded migrants that work under exploitative conditions out of fear of deportation or worst. 

In the midst of the worker’s exploitation we have the odd cultural clashes between tourists as to who gets the sun lounger closest to the pool and who can push pass the queue to get first to the place of interest you were told by someone in the office you must go to.  Of course there are those who have famously complained before, because on their way to their exclusive resort were confronted by sad looking refugees. Not a real advertisement on tolerance and co-existence, quite the opposite.  Of course, in this blog I have left completely out the carbon footprint we leave whenever we do these summer escapes, but that shall be the subject for another post. 

Tourism is a great thing but when Eurostat claims that one in two Greeks cannot afford a weeks’ vacation in Greece, then something maybe wrong with the world.  Holidays are great and we want the places to be clean, we want to travel in comfort and we want quality in what we will consume.  I wonder if we have the same concerns about those people who enter Europe in shaky boats, the back of lorries or on foot, crossing borders without shoes.