BBC
ATHENS: Greece has launched its tourist season, lifting most remaining restrictions on movement and declaring “we are putting the lockdown behind us”.
Although an average of 2,000 daily Covid cases are still being reported, vaccinations are being rolled out. German tourists have begun flying in. From 17 May it will not be illegal for Britons to travel to “amber list” Greece, but they are advised not to.
Only for “green list” countries such as Portugal will rules ease significantly.
Greece still has several restrictions. However, the big changes are that residents no longer have to send text messages to a hotline whenever they leave their homes or go shopping, movement is allowed between regions, and a night-time curfew has now been limited to between 00:30 and 05:00.
A fifth of Greece’s economy is seen as dependent on the tourism sector and 20% of workers are employed by it.”We are opening our tourist industry to the world,” Tourism Minister Haris Theoharis announced in front of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion outside Athens.
What tourists have to do
Visitors from a list of 53 approved countries have to fill in a passenger locator form (PLF) the day before they travel, listing where they are staying and supplying a vaccine certificate, a negative PCR test or a documentation of recent recovery from Covid. The rules are a precursor to the EU-wide digital certificate that is scheduled to help free up travel by the end of June.
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Flights from several German airports, including Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Hanover and Stuttgart, landed at Heraklion airport in Crete. Travel giant Tui said it was resuming flights to Kos, Rhodes and Corfu on Saturday and the rest of Greece next month. Charter flights were also landing at Rhodes, mainly from Poland and Israel.
Greece had hoped that British tourists would be able to start flying in freely from 17 May, but Greece has been placed on the UK’s “amber list”.
Anyone travelling as a tourist would be going against government advice and would face issues. Anyone returning to England or Scotland would have to quarantine for 10 days.
The government in Athens has launched a glossy video showing a selection of prospective tourists dreaming of escaping to the sun for a natural tan and tasting “real food”, with the message “all you want is Greece”. The campaign is described as the national tourism organisation’s biggest in a decade.
