How things got ugly on Greece’s ‘Instagram island’

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There’s a volcano waiting to explode on Santorini, but it’s not the world-famous caldera.

The dazzling whitewashed houses, blue-domed churches, blue sky and sea of ​​this uniquely stunning Greek island draw a story 3.4 million visitors per year, far exceeding the approximately 20,000 permanent residents of Santorini.

Around 17,000 cruise ship passengers arrive on the island on peak days of high season, heading straight for hot spots like the capital Fira and the northwestern tip city of Oia, known for its spectacular sunsets. It has even earned the nickname “Instagram Island” because of its perfectly saturated “unfiltered” splendor.

The narrow cobblestone streets and cliffside balconies are packed with tourists looking for sunset selfies, and locals are disturbed as they go about their daily chores. When night comes, however, the crowds disappear and some complain that the island goes from Times Square to a ghost town.

It’s a volatile mix that has led to growing discontent on this Cycladic island in the Aegean Sea, whose rugged landscape was shaped by a volcanic eruption around 1600 BC.

Visitor cap coming in 2025

Santorini Mayor Nikos Zorzos has proposed a maximum passenger limit on cruise ships, to 8,000 per day. It is a move supported by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who said Bloomberg the measure is scheduled for next year.

Anti-tourism protests have been a political focus in Europe this summer, with demonstrations taking place in Spain, the Netherlands and elsewhere. Thursday, Venice limited tour group sizes for 25 people and banned megaphones, having recently declared its entrance fee a success, earning the city about $2.64 million in revenue.

Overtourism has become a travel buzzword in recent years as popular destinations struggle to balance visitors’ need for dollars with their residents’ quality of life and maintaining a desirable, sustainable environment for all. .

In Santorini, according to some, there are simply not many tourists.

‘The island is empty’

“Excess tourism does not exist. What I see is a lack of structures,” Gianluca Chimenti, a local tour operator and resident of Santorini for 18 years, told CNN Travel. Although social media is full of images of overcrowding in the island’s hot spots at peak times, he says the picture the rest of the time is very different.

“The truth is that the island is empty. Right now it’s like never before, it’s the worst season ever.”

July and August are peak season in Santorini, but city centers are dead after 9pm and restaurants and hotels are far from full, he says. Cruise ship passengers are valued and much needed, as are longer-stay visitors arriving by boat or plane, but he says the feeling among locals is that something has to give.

In the mid-20th century, Santorini was still a sleepy idyll, where residents rode donkeys and cultivated tomatoes and vineyards to produce wine. Now the island’s aging infrastructure is under severe pressure, with the main port of Fira under particular strain.

Unless they want a long, very steep walk, the cable car is the only option for cruise ship passengers to get from Porto Velho to the city center, Chimenti points out, and “it is absolutely normal for you to have a queue if the cruise ships are all together.”

However, when the crowds are gone, “hotels right now are more or less below 30% of a normal season,” he says, and says other businesses on the island are taking a similar hit.

“The problem is that social networks are showing something completely different from what reality is,” he says. Although many, many tourists will visit this year, there are also many others who are put off by its reputation for overcrowding and do not consider it a year-round destination for longer stays.

The need to diversify

The Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a global trade body, announced on August 1 that it met with Greek Maritime Affairs Minister Christos Stylianides to discuss the crisis, including improving and modernizing port infrastructure and services. .

The tourism boom in Greece is not just happening in Santorini. Domestic tourism revenues rose 16% in the first five months of this year, Reuters reports, and 2024 is expected to eclipse last year’s record 33 million arrivals.

“Recently, the growth of tourism in Greece has attracted significant attention, particularly with regard to the islands of Santorini and Mykonos,” said Maria Deligianni, CLIA regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, in a statement. She confirmed her cruise lines’ commitment to maintaining the 8,000 passenger limit and said there was strong interest in diversifying Greek itineraries to ease pressure on the most popular locations.

Currently, almost two-thirds of cruise tourism in Greece takes place in Piraeus, Santorini and Mykonos, CLIA said.

“Santorini has one of the most important archaeological sites in Europe today,” says Chimenti. “Why don’t cruise ships organize visits to archaeological sites? If you divide people into three parts of the island, then at different times they will be doing different things,” he says, “they will have time to enjoy and you will never have crowds in any part of the island.”

‘It was absolutely magical’

Santorini’s breathtaking romantic views have made it an extremely popular choice for honeymoons and destination weddings. Katie Haslam, from Rochdale, England, spent her honeymoon there in July, but says careful planning was key to giving her and her husband, Rob, the vacation of their dreams.

“We didn’t want to go to Fira because we read that it was very, very busy,” she says. Instead, they chose a village on top of a cliff, a few kilometers from the capital, and “it was simply incredible, charming and peaceful”.

On the one day they entered Fira, “I think about eight cruise ships arrived, thousands and thousands of people, so we just stayed away.”

Love was also in the air. “We saw at least two weddings every day,” she says. “One of the days, there were six weddings.”

As for the famous sunsets, which like so many others were their main attraction, they avoided the hustle and bustle of the city and “sat on our balcony every night at 8 o’clock with a bottle of wine. It was absolutely magical.”

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