NEW YORK -- U.S. arrivals to Greece have fallen in the past couple of years, even as the number of overall visitors to Greece increased 10%, Greek authorities said here Tuesday.
As protesters in Athens held demonstrations against the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a team of officials from Greece's tourism and development ministries were here spreading the word that their country is safe for tourists and open to tourism development.
Minister of Tourism Olga Kefalogianni said that despite a lot of negative publicity, Greece's tourism sector has been very resilient to the country's fiscal crisis, adding that 2011 was a record year in terms of arrivals.
But despite the record numbers, officials are concerned about the drop in U.S. visitors, from 600,000 in 2010 to a projected 500,000 this year.
"The challenge is to attract the visitors from the United States because we have seen the figures in terms of arrivals declining in these past years," she said. "That's one of the reasons we are here."
Kefalogianni said that she was meeting with members of the travel industry as well as with former New York Mayor Rudolf Giuliani, who she consulted about how to help repair Athens' image.
She said tourism remained a "very important and very dynamic sector of the economy," representing 8% of Greece's gross domestic product in direct spending,16% in indirect spending and contributing 800,000 jobs.
Nicholas Karahalios, general secretary of the Ministry of Tourism, likened the demonstrations taking place in the country to the Occupy Wall Street protests in the U.S., which posed no threat to tourists.
"People have the right to express political views, even by assembling," he said. "These demonstrations take place in the center of Athens, most of them are not violent, and people go back to their normal lives an hour later."
The ministers also said that Greece is undergoing crucial reforms to make the nation more investor-friendly.
Notis Mitarachi, Greece's deputy minister of development, said the country was also experiencing a "change in mentality" and admits Greece was "slow to understand the need to attract investments."
"There is a change from red tape to red carpet," he said. "There are a number of investments that were stopped for decades from going through and getting licensed that are now being fast-tracked."
Mitarachi pointed out that a five-hotel development project in Crete had recently been given fast-track approval after being on hold for 14 years.
"We want to send a signal to the investment community, we are centralizing the licensing process and creating a framework to solve the planning issues for major investments," he said.
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