![The 'world’s most Instagrammed caldera' hasn't featured in many snaps recently](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2021/06/02/GettyImages-171574243_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqplGOf-dgG3z4gg9owgQTXAsIcagKWDTsYii0WZbrxoU.jpg?imwidth=680)
Why tourist-starved Santorini desperately needs to be on the UK’s green list
In 2019, locals here were complaining about crowded streets. Now Oia is a ghost town and they would do anything for green list status
![The 'world’s most Instagrammed caldera' hasn't featured in many snaps recently](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2021/06/02/GettyImages-171574243_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqplGOf-dgG3z4gg9owgQTXAsIcagKWDTsYii0WZbrxoU.jpg?imwidth=680)
Following my early afternoon arrival, I leave Santorini’s bustling ferry port and climb the steep road towards Thira town.
Perched on the rim of the world’s most Instagrammed caldera, the sugar-white villages high above us shimmer mirage-like in the early June heat.
“It is the best time to be here – the weather is beautiful and yet we are empty,” my taxi driver, Giorgos, tells me.
He points to the port far below. “It’s busy now because a ferry has just arrived, but schedules have been cut – there are barely any ferries now. Normally I would be taking people back and forth to the port all day long, but now...”
He shakes his head. “The hotels are open, but the tourists are not yet here.”
![Greece has unlocked the door to tourism but is still quiet](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2021/06/02/GettyImages-1277797638_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqek9vKm18v_rkIPH9w2GMNpPHkRvugymKLtqq96r_VP8.jpg?imwidth=350)
Like many local Santorini businesses, Giorgos was overjoyed when Tui’s Mein Schiff ship, carrying around 1,000 German tourists, sailed from Crete to Santorini on May 14. He is hoping that the cruise ships will come back and bring the tourists with them.
“In 2019, more than 1.1 million cruise passengers came here – that’s nearly half of all our visitors,” he says. “We complained then – about crowded streets and all the people climbing to Oia for the sunsets, but now Oia is a ghost town and we would do anything to have those crowds again.”
Originally lauded for its handling of the pandemic, Greece has seen a spike in Covid cases over the past few months. “People think it is affecting all of Greece, but most of those cases are in Athens and the north – not so many here in Santorini,” says Aris Salonikas the manager of Kivotos, a luxury all-suite hotel in Imerovigli, a village known as ‘the balcony of the Aegean’ because of its breathtaking caldera views.
Aris tells me that he is “praying” that the UK will add Santorini to the green list soon. “In normal years the UK made up only about 20 per cent of our clientele, but last year it was the UK that kept Santorini afloat – they were by far our main clients. We’re hoping this year will be the same,” he tells me.
![Locals say touristy Oia is now a ghost town](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2021/06/02/GettyImages-1229086105_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqjJeHvIwLm2xPr27m7LF8md8oAmGZYX8Vqbq2hlobTFc.jpg?imwidth=350)
Like many of the island’s hotels, Kivotos has been badly affected by the pandemic. “Imagine: we first opened our doors in 2019. We worked for a few months and then the pandemic hit and we stayed closed for all of 2020 – it’s very difficult,” Aris says.
Speaking in a recent press conference, the country’s tourism minister, Harry Theoharis, predicted that tourist levels in Greece this year would be “around 50 per cent of 2019”, but Christina Tetradi, the deputy president of the Greek hoteliers union, has said that bookings in May were “non-existent” and that only 10 per cent of the country’s hotels have opened so far.
Only 2.11 million Greeks – roughly 20 per cent of the population – have received both doses of the Covid-19 vaccine, and many are blaming this slow rollout for the sluggish start to the country’s vital tourist season. Vowing to ramp up the country’s vaccination campaign, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis launched Operation Blue Freedom last month, promising that residents of all Greek islands will be vaccinated by the end of June.
“When the government said we would have tourists by mid-May, we knew it would be more like July,” Aris says, wryly.
“With vaccinations I think it is the same. It’s all very well saying that Greece is open, but just yesterday I learnt that the Chinese and the Russians can’t come here because they have the wrong vaccines.
“No one knows what this year will be like and yet so many people’s livelihoods depend on us having a good season. I think that all eyes here in Santorini will be on the UK’s revised green list.”