Music Tourism In Greece

The Olympic Games of 2004 in Athens, helped the country to implement changes and improvements in the Greek infrastructure ( www.investingreece.gov.gr, 2010). A few of the changes occurred in the tourism strategy as well that slightly used music  in the past to promote tourism in Greece. The popularity of Eurovision song contest in Greece made the Ministry of Greek Culture and Tourism to name ambassadors of Greece,  Sakis Rouvas in 2009 (Eleftherotypia,2009) and Helena Paparizou in 2005 (Paravantes, 2005). The ministry financed the touring of the 2 pop idols and co-promoted Greece as a tourist destination.

 Nowadays the recent economic crisis in Greece that initially struck in 2008 (Organization for European Economic Cooperation,2010) has prevented the government to finance music activities (www.avopolis.gr, 2008)  but the competitive advantages of the country along with tourism trends remain the best practice for music tourism in Greece. The demographics change in the world are going to have an impact at the young who work fulltime and may choose to relax on holiday (World Tourism Organization,2010). Greece is attracting young tourists that  look for holidays activities which offer them knowledge and understanding of cultural activities (Chaitip, Chaiboonsri,  Kovács,  Balogh, 2010) . The cultural activities in Greece are very popular, especially music concerts with foreign artists because they have great attendance (www.mixgrill.gr , 2008).

Greece is located in the Southeast Europe in an area of 131, 990 sq. km and the border countries are:  Albania (282 km), Bulgaria (494 km), Turkey (206 km), FYROM (246 km) (www.investingreece.gov.gr, 2010).  The country is considered the hub of the Southeast Europe because Greek companies have a strong hold in this area and there’s a constant mobility of goods and persons. This fact encourages young people  travel in Greece to attend concerts with major international artists. According to Didi Music, during the summer Rockwave Festival already attracts people from Balkans, Turkey and Israel (Loris, 2010).

In 2007 the majority of foreigners, who are EU citizens, like 2006, came from the UK (15%), Germany (12.9%) and Italy (6.6%) (2007, Greek Ministry Of Economy and Finance). Communication is not going to be a problem for all those visitors because
Greece has the largest share of  students (92%) studying one foreign language and the most popular language is English (2006, Eurostat Press Office) . This fact encourages foreigners visit Greece for Tourism every year because English is used as the common language between tourist and hosts (Sharma, 2004).

Ministry of Greek Tourism announced that the new strategy in 2011 is going to be  experience based (Nikitiadis, 2010)  and that’s why the Ministry of Tourism created a web 2.0 site (www.mygreece.gr)  . In this website, tourists share their experiences about various points of attraction in Greece, including local festivals. The concept of experience seems to very interesting as it fits with the plans of the local concert promoters who consider music festivals” Unique experience, great international and local bands to play, line up is equal to the big European festivals, the weather is amazing, great Greek hospitality” (Trantou,2010).

Article by : V. Yfantis, School of computing, University of the West Scotland, Paisley, UK, E-mail: Byfantis@yahoo.com

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