tourism
Rhodes: Forest fires do not scare tourists
The images of the fires on Rhodes went around the world. photo
© Petros Giannakouris/AP/dpa
Deep black clouds of smoke instead of sunshine, charred tree stumps instead of an idyllic beach, tourists fleeing – the images of the fires on Rhodes went around the world. But holidaymakers remain loyal to the “Sun Island”.
It was about survival: within hours in July they had to move to the southeast of the Greek holiday island Rhodes brought a good 20,000 tourists to safety from massive forest and bush fires.
“If it had been night, we would have been killed,” said a German vacationer at the time. Firefighting helicopters roared over hotel pools to collect water, locals picked up people in pickup trucks and buses and brought them out of danger through thick clouds of smoke, stormy winds and the acrid smell of fire. But despite the “holiday hell”, as some media headlined, the number of visitors to the Aegean island remained unbroken.
This weekend is the end – then the tourism season on Rhodes officially comes to an end, and despite the fires the results are extremely positive. At the beginning of November, up to 11,000 holidaymakers arrived at the island airport every day. “It looks like we’re doing even better this year than last year,” says Manolis Markopoulos, head of the Rhodes Hotel Association. In 2022, around 2.5 million visitors traveled to the sunny island, which is said to have once belonged to the Greek sun god Helios and which can shine with around 280 days of sunshine and more than 3,000 hours of sunshine per year.
Visitors even after the fires
Looking back, it seems as if the island suffered more from the reports about the fires than from the fire itself: “It only burned in the southeast of Rhodes, not even five percent of the island’s area was affected,” Markopoulos clarifies and criticizes: “That The image painted internationally was dire – as if the entire island was on fire.” Of around 100 hotels that had to be evacuated due to the fires, only three remained closed due to major damage – the rest were able to reopen.
Many holidaymakers across the island continued to enjoy their holidays undisturbed despite the fires, and new tourists were not deterred either. “When the first customers came after the fires, many asked: Where is the fire, where did it burn?” remembers Markopoulos. With one caveat: “Everything around the affected coastal towns of Gennadi and Kiotari is actually charred black – and that won’t change until next season.”
The Rhodians are proud of having managed the evacuations so well – there weren’t even any injuries, says Markopoulos. According to the government, it was the largest evacuation operation ever in Greece. Many tourists were also full of praise for the islanders, some of whom accommodated people in their own homes. They thank you for coming back.
Lots of bookings for 2024
This is also because the tour operators continue to rely on Rhodes. According to the hotel association, bookings for 2024 are already up to 40 percent higher than this year. The tour operator TUI has even increased flights to Rhodes from Central and Northern Europe.
There will also be comprehensive connections to the island again in 2024 for holidaymakers from Germany, says TUI spokesman Aage Dünhaupt. Along with Crete, Rhodes is the most popular holiday destination in Greece and, accordingly, one of the most important in terms of volume. The TUI Care Foundation, a corporate foundation, is now planning a reforestation project on the island. Native, fire-tolerant trees should be planted in the “TUI Forest”.
The Greek government, for its part, promised support for the tourists affected by the fires in July: According to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, those who had to cancel their vacation as a result should be able to stay on the island for a week free of charge in spring or autumn 2024, i.e. in the off-season . According to the Ministry of Tourism, the tour operators have recently received suggestions on how this campaign can be implemented.
Concern about weather extremes and natural disasters
The fires on Rhodes have not deterred tourism, but in the sector that is so economically important for Greece, there is still concern about increasing extreme weather and natural disasters.
Rhodes was not an isolated case: in August there were fires near Athens, on the Peloponnese peninsula and around the northeastern Greek port city of Alexandroupolis. There were also huge fires in the nearby Dadia National Park. At the beginning of September, severe storms flooded the central Greek port city of Volos. Each time, several people were killed, including a couple from Austria in the September floods whose holiday home was swept away by the floods.
The government blames climate change for these extremes. Years ago, the Ministry for Climate Crisis and Citizen Protection established a system of warning SMS and quick evacuations in the event of fires and floods, which also appears on the smartphones of foreign guests – and has probably spoiled many a vacation this year. But that doesn’t stop Greece fans: around 30 million people travel to Hellas every year.