There is a volcano ready to blow on Santorini, but it surely’s not the world-famous caldera.
The dazzling white-washed homes, blue-domed church buildings and azure skies and sea of this uniquely gorgeous Greek island pull in a reported 3.4 million guests a yr, far outnumbering Santorini’s 20,000 or so everlasting residents.
As many as 17,000 cruise ship passengers surge onto the island on peak days in excessive season, heading straight to scorching spots such because the capital Fira and the city of Oia on its northwestern tip, famend for its spectacular sunsets.
It is even earned the nickname “Instagram Island” due to its completely saturated “no filter” splendour.
The slim cobbled streets and cliffside balconies are crammed cheek to jowl with vacationers looking for sundown selfies, and locals are disturbed as they go about their each day enterprise. When night comes, nonetheless, the crowds soften away, and a few complain the island goes from Instances Sq. to ghost city.
It is a risky combine that is led to discontent constructing on this Cyclades island within the Aegean Sea, whose rugged panorama was formed by a volcanic eruption round 1600 BC.
Customer cap coming in 2025
Santorini Mayor Nikos Zorzos has proposed a cap on cruise ship passengers, all the way down to 8000 a day. It is a transfer backed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who advised Bloomberg the measure is ready for subsequent yr.
Over-tourism has develop into a significant buzzword in journey in recent times as common locations battle to steadiness their want for customer {dollars} with the standard of lifetime of their residents and sustaining a fascinating and sustainable setting for all.
On Santorini, based on some, it is not merely a case of too many vacationers.
“Over-tourism would not exist. What I see is a scarcity of buildings,” Gianluca Chimenti, a neighborhood tour operator and a Santorini resident for 18 years, tells CNN Journey. Whereas social media is crammed with photos of the extreme overcrowding within the island’s scorching spots at peak instances, he says the image the remainder of the time could be very totally different.
“The reality is that the island is empty. Proper now could be like by no means earlier than, it is the worst season ever.”
July and August are excessive season in Santorini, however the city centres are useless after 9pm and eating places and lodges are nowhere close to capability, he says. Cruise ship passengers are valued and far wanted, as are these longer-stay guests coming by boat or airplane, however he says the sensation amongst locals is that one thing has to provide.
Within the mid-to-late-Twentieth century, Santorini was nonetheless a sleepy idyll the place residents acquired round on donkeys and cultivated tomatoes and vineyards for wine. Now the island’s outdated infrastructure is below extreme strain, with the primary port at Fira below explicit pressure.
Until they need an extended and really steep stroll, the cable automotive is the one possibility for cruise ship passengers to get from the Outdated Port to the town centre, factors out Chimenti, and “it is completely regular that you will have a line if the cruise ships are coming all collectively.”
Nonetheless, when the crowds are gone, “the lodges proper now are roughly below 30 per cent of a traditional season,” he claims, and says that different companies on the island are taking an identical hit.
“The issue is that the social media are displaying one thing utterly totally different from what’s the actuality,” he says. Whereas many, many vacationers will likely be visiting this yr, there are additionally many others who’re delay by its overcrowded fame and are usually not contemplating it as a year-round vacation spot for longer stays.
Cruise Traces Worldwide Affiliation (CLIA), a worldwide commerce physique, introduced on August 1 that it had met with Greece’s minister of maritime affairs, Christos Stylianides, to debate the disaster, together with enchancment and improve of port infrastructure and companies.
Greece’s tourism growth is not simply in Santorini. Nationwide tourism revenues rose 16 per cent within the first 5 months of this yr, Reuters studies, and 2024 is predicted to eclipse final yr’s file 33 million arrivals.
“Not too long ago, the expansion of tourism in Greece has garnered important consideration, significantly in regards to the islands of Santorini and Mykonos,” mentioned Maria Deligianni, CLIA’s regional director for the Jap Mediterranean, in an announcement.
She confirmed its cruise strains’ dedication to upholding the 8000-passenger customer cap and mentioned that there was robust curiosity in diversifying Greek itineraries to take strain off the most well-liked spots.
At the moment, practically two-thirds of cruise tourism in Greece takes place in Piraeus, Santorini and Mykonos, CLIA mentioned.
“Santorini has some of the vital archaeological websites proper now in Europe,” says Chimenti. “Why are cruise ships not organizing excursions to the archaeological websites? For those who cut up the individuals in three elements of the island, so at totally different instances they’re doing a number of issues,” then he says, “they’ve time to get pleasure from and you’ll by no means have crowds in any a part of the island.”
‘It was completely magical’
Santorini’s breathtakingly romantic vistas have made it a massively common alternative for honeymoons and vacation spot weddings. Katie Haslam of Rochdale, England, spent her honeymoon there in July, however she says that cautious planning was key to her and her husband, Rob, having the holiday of their goals.
“We did not need to go to Fira as a result of we might learn that it was actually, actually busy,” she says. As a substitute they selected a clifftop village just some kilometres from the capital, and “it was simply superb, beautiful and quiet.”
On the someday they walked into Fira, “I feel there have been about eight cruise ships that got here in, hundreds and hundreds of individuals, so we simply stayed away.”
Love was additionally within the air. “We noticed not less than two weddings day by day,” she says. “One of many days, there was six weddings on.”
As for the well-known sunsets, which like for therefore many others was their chief pull for visiting, they prevented the scrum on the town and “sat on our balcony each evening at 8.00 with a bottle of wine. It was completely magical.”
