The main tourist season will be postponed – because of the heat, says TUI CEO Sebastian Ebel, according to a Bild report.
As Mr. Ebel notes, on the occasion of the fires in Southern European countries that are also popular tourist destinations, there could be a shift of the main tourist season - that is, the July-August period - to the period preceding or following it.
As he explained, there will be more bookings from February to May and then in the fall, which will mean a longer season and could be important for tourist destinations as well, both ecologically and economically.
Although the Mediterranean islands, he says, remain attractive, TUI is also turning to new areas as holiday destinations, such as the Cape Verde islands, Zanzibar or the coasts of Poland, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Sebastian Ebel, who was recently in Rhodes in order to have a clear picture of the situation on the island, emphasizes to Bild that "without wanting to downplay anything, in the north of the island there were no fires or restrictions", it was correct, however, that the affected areas in the south were evacuated as a precaution and the tourists were removed from Rhodes, both for their own safety and for the relief of the island.
According to the authorities, as the newspaper writes, in the affected areas of Rhodes three of the total 75 hotels that were evacuated were damaged, while all the hotels collaborating with TUI came out almost unscathed from the fires.
A total of 8.000 TUI customers were evacuated from their accommodation and around half of them were accommodated in other hotels and accommodation on the island, while the other half were repatriated. At the moment there are a total of 16.000 tourists-customers of TUI in Rhodes, of which a third are Germans, as pointed out.
The TUI CEO also said further damage would be caused to Rhodes if no more tourists visited the island after the fires, given that, he says, more than 90% of Rhodes' economy is based on tourism.
He also notes that not all vacationers have the right to be automatically removed from areas affected by natural disasters, and he even notes that TUI removed from Rhodes with its emergency flights free of charge hundreds of travelers who did not use its tourist packages, for this and he is proposing EU-wide legislation to protect holidaymakers.
KYPE