Weeks after being shook by thousands of earthquakes mainly on a small scale, the island of Santorini, the jewel in the crown of the tourist sector of Greece, is determined to return to business as usual-even if the earthquake phenomenon remains a mystery.
The island dependent on tourism, who had enjoyed a strong return after the Pandemia del Coronavirus, is counting on it.
The first two cruise ships of the season have arrived the last two Sundays in March and more than 40 are scheduled for this month, giving way to one year in which the union of the owners of cruise ships provided for a 10 % increase in visitors to the cruise last year.
But hoteliers still expect a slower year, with falling bookings by about 30 percent than 2024.
“Things have woken up in the last two weeks,” said Alexis Yannoulatos, which manages the Blue Dolphins Hotel and the great view of the Caldera di Santorini, the edge of an ancient volcano that gave the island its unique form, multicolored beaches and rock formations. But he said April would probably be “miserable” for tourist revenue.
Mr. Yannoulatos, who hosted visitors to South Korea at the height of the earthquake crisis in mid -February, said that the occupation in his hotels was 30 percent for April, with reserves for May and summer months that should climb about 50 percent.
Maria Manusoudaki, owner of the high suites on the south-west of the island, said that reservations “arrived in drops and guts” for the next two months, but that he would open half this week, with visitors to Great Britain, France and Israel and the United States.
The island, which has a population of 15,500 and generally hosts more than three million visitors every year, previously worried about over -urism and even this week, the authorities who launched the Santorini tourist campaign insisted on the importance of “sustainable” tourism. From 1 June, visitors to the cruise ship must pay a charge of 20 euros, about $ 21.50, a measure approved last year to reduce the voltage of excessive crazy on the island.
But a few weeks ago, thousands of earthquakes agitated the island, sometimes every few minutes, sending most of the residents on the run. The authorities closed the schools and implemented the emergency services in the region, and experts climbed to interpret the tremors, which peaks with a 5.3 magnitude templer on February 10.
While the earthquakes loosened at the end of February and at the beginning of March, residents returned, the schools were reopened and the hoteliers resumed the renovation works in preparation for Easter and Summer visitors. Now, most tremors are less than magnitude 3, substantially imperceptible, and life on the island is returning to normal.
Yet the phenomenon of the earthquake remains inexplicable.
“We have not yet come to a conclusion on the causes,” Athanassi Ganas, director of the research of the National Observatory of Athens’ Geodynamics Institute said this week.
Some areas on the side of the cliff that are subject to landslides will remain out of limits until May 15th while earthquake experts seek ways to minimize the risk, the mayor Nikos Zorzos told journalists at the launch of the tourist campaign of the island at the ACROPOLI Museum of Athens Tuesday.
“At the beginning there will be some numbness, but the season has been opened – we are ready,” he insisted.
The Tourism Minister of Greece, Olga Kefalogianni, told the event that Santorini was “returning to normal” and that “remains a safe and hospitable destination”, adding that the safety of residents and visitors “is our absolute priority”.
The crisis of the earthquake also influenced the seasonal workforce of the island, with the tremors that are added to the long -standing workers concerns in the long hours requested in the summer locations and the lack of benefits for the whole year as health insurance, said Giorgos Diamantoulos, secretary general of the association of merchants and business professionals of Santorini.
The recruitment has already started for the 25,000 seasonal workers on which the tourist sector of the island is based, added, adding that the hires have so far been from Albania, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and the Philippines. The statistics of the Ministry of Labor showed that just over 2,600 workers were hired in March.
In the meantime, scientists are trying to understand recent earthquakes.
The researchers are using seismic monitors and underwater vehicles with a remote control to study the tremors and volcanoes of the area, although they emphasize that a greater eruption is not expected, the last having occurred 3,500 years ago.
And on Monday evening, foreign scientists joined their Greek counterparts with a video connection for a discussion in Athens to analyze tremors and slight volcanic activity with the help of artificial intelligence. They agreed one thing: the sequence of the earthquake was unprecedented and remarkable.
As for the prospects for a strong earthquake, Ganas said that the data suggested that it was unlikely, even if the region has the potential for a templer up to a size of 7.1.
The hoteliers of the island are preparing for geological and financial turbulence, although Mrs. Manusoudaki said she was more worried about the monetary losses of a possible great earthquake, given the resilience of the buildings of Santorini.
“It is true that many buildings on the caldera cling substantially to the cliffs,” he said. “But they are built to resist earthquakes,” he added. “I feel safer here than I would do in Athens.”