Last weekend I visited Lake Trichonida, in Western Greece along with other Board Members of the Greek Ecotourism Society. The lake is relatively unknown as a destination, even for domestic tourism, although it is Greece's largest natural lake and a natural treasure. The purpose of our visit was to support the local National Park Authorities in...
On July the 18th I was at the famous Louros beach in Western Greece, along with 50 volunteers from 10 NGOs for the purposes of collecting rubbish, 10,000 litres to be exact, mostly left by day trippers. Louros beach is part of the Messolonghi-Aitoliko wetland and National Park. The cleanup was organised by the Greek Ecotourism Society, a new non-governmental, non-profit organisation. Our overall aim was to unite local NGOs, raise awareness, and support the understaffed National Park authority. Currently there are no waste or recycling bins in the area, which is popular with locals and flamingoes, while environmental awareness is low. Louros beach also suffers from illegal/unlicensed construction (summerhouses and beach bars). Our project, "Nature Guardians, Active Citizens for Sustainable Management of Preservation of Protected Areas", will continue with another voluntary cleanup and a day conference in September 2021, in Lake Trichonida, Greece's largest natural lake, also in Western Greece.
Finding a suitable opportunity was always difficult and tourism graduates were increasingly obliged to work initially for free or even to pay for the privilege of gaining valuable experience. The pandemic has made it worse. According to the latest projection from the WTTC the global travel & tourism sectors may lose up to 174 million jobs in 20...
The European Tourism Convention, was a one day, virtual, high-level event organised by the European Commission (the executive branch of the European Union), with the apparent aim of collecting ideas and proposals for the sustainable restart of the European Tourism sector. It took place online on October 12th. In the morning, around 150 delegates, r...
An ambitious 14-month European Union-funded grant project under the rather long title “Technical Assistance action to support tourism planning and policy for the promotion of sustainable tourism development in Greece Reference No.: SRSS/S2016/013” was completed in September and last Friday 15/9 ECOCLUB.com was invited to attend the final “Dissemination Workshop” in downtown Athens. The project was supported by the EU Structural Reform Programme (SRSS), led by an Austrian consortium composed of the Federal Procurement Agency (BBG) and the Agency for Economic Cooperation and Development (AED) and involved the cooperation of the Greek Ministry of Economy, Development & Tourism (MEDT) while “twin” experts from Austria/EU and the Greek side were allocated on each topic. The leading domestic and foreign tourism experts also involved ECOCLUB.com Members Mr Robert Travers who was responsible for the Diving (sea) parks segment. The two key aims of this ambitious and multifaceted project, which started in July 2016,...
