Greece Opens for Mid-May Tourism Restart

Greece opened its doors to visitors on Monday, with few reservations, but hopes for a better season to compensate for a disastrous 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Hoteliers on Rhodes Island, where the majority of tourists are foreign, are scrubbing, polishing, and painting in preparation for a make-or-break year.

“We’re preparing the hotel in order to start as soon as the government gives us the green light,” said George Tselios, general manager of Sun Beach Hotel, which has customers from Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom.

Tourists from the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, Serbia, Israel, and the United Arab Emirates will not be quarantined starting Monday if they are vaccinated or test negative for COVID-19.

Tourism, which accounts for a fifth of Greece’s GDP and one in every five jobs, is critical for an economy that had recovered from a decade-long depression only to fall back into recession last year when COVID-19 hit.

Rhodes will have already laid out the umbrellas for the season, which runs from March to October, in a normal year. It looked like a ghost town in mid-April.

A long, dusty, empty coastline was dominated by hushed luxury resorts. Beach towns that are usually bustling with British visitors were deserted, with shuttered stores, tavernas, and bars.