![Crowds in Santorini, Greece](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000347415331_16934730409850_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRo0U4xU-30oDveS4pXV-Vv4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=680)
‘Some people are so desperate they live in caves’ – the brutal truth about a holiday hotspot
The long-suffering Greek island of Santorini has just 15,000 residents but attracts two million visitors a year, to the dismay of locals
![Crowds in Santorini, Greece](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000347415331_16934730409850_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqRo0U4xU-30oDveS4pXV-Vv4Xpit_DMGvdp2n7FDd82k.jpeg?imwidth=680)
As the sun slid behind the smooth black edge of the world’s most famous caldera, the crowds congregating beside Oia’s hilltop castle erupted in loud cheers, accompanied by dazzling flashes from a thousand cameras. It was like the red carpet at Cannes, but this was an average evening in Santorini, the long-suffering Cyclades island of 15,000 souls that attracts around two million visitors each year.
“We’ve just come for a couple of days to do Santorini – sunset cruises and all that – and then we’ll go to one of the cheap islands for a week,” 19-year-old Karen Fuller from Kent told me later as we jostled for space along one of the narrow alleys in the island’s capital, Fira, where crowds are so dense most days it’s almost impossible to move.
According to local shopkeepers, the majority of the tourists roaming Fira’s constricted lanes come from cruise ships. “Of course we like the money and we want tourism, but these people you see from the cruises are no good for us – they don’t spend money here,” one harassed shop owner told me. “They have everything on their ships – even souvenir shops – so they just come to wander around and block our streets.”
![Cruise ship in Santorini, Greece](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000347419476_16934755729000_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqBrlO6rLdEORk7V2a5RFARj4l-pWjZOB4jlE5Hq5Wa20.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Prompted by a bumper year in 2017, when as many as 18,000 cruise passengers arrived on the busiest days, there are plans to reduce the daily maximum to 8,000. These are currently on ice, however. “During the Covid years there were many conversations about adopting a more responsible approach to tourism – in reality, very little has changed: the focus seems to remain on economic gain,” says Dr Lauren Siegel, senior lecturer in tourism and events at the University of Greenwich.
Cruise ships are just one of the many problems facing an island which is roughly the size of Guernsey. According to a recent study by the University of The Aegean, concrete now covers around 15 per cent of Santorini’s surface (compared to an average of one per cent on surrounding islands). To borrow the words of Joni Mitchell, they’ve paved paradise.
Lukas Belonias, who grew up on the island, has seen it change out of all recognition. “In the old times, Santorini was made up of small villages – now you can’t see where one village ends and the other begins,” he says. The 42-year-old engineer, who owns a four-room hotel carved out of a traditional canava wine cave in the hamlet of Vothonas, is also angry at what he sees as “parachute tourism”. He laments: “It’s like Las Vegas here – people come for three days to see the sunset, do their photo shoot, eat sushi at their hotel and leave. What have they seen of the local lifestyle or our island’s culture?”
![Santorini, Greece](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000347415866_16934738284900_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLFvFcbCCSSPOPEZoCZQZEkR8YSybYNWDTYrGStsI8ko.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Other issues include waste management – Santorini has one of the country’s ugliest open landfill sites – and water. “There are trucks to deliver water to all the hotels, which only adds to the traffic problems in summer,” Belonias explains. “We also have desalination plants, but this procedure uses a lot of electricity and our energy here is provided by diesel-fuelled power plants, so it just adds to the problem.”
Dr Siegel, who conducted research on the effects of high visitor numbers in Santorini prior to the pandemic, concluded that – although tourism does bring jobs to the island – it also causes inflation, making goods and services unaffordable for many locals.
Furthermore, real estate in Santorini is amongst the costliest in Europe, meaning many are also priced out of the housing market. Authorities even make regular pleas to islanders to ‘adopt’ teachers and medical staff who are unable to find affordable lodgings.
Taxi driver Nikos, originally from Athens and who regularly works 16-hour days, told me that since the advent of Airbnbs it’s nearly impossible to find an affordable place to stay in Santorini. “It was bad before, but now that local people can rent out their houses for lots of money, those of us who work in tourism spend weeks trying to find somewhere. If we’re lucky we might find somewhere that’s very cramped and very expensive – maybe 500 or 600 euros a month, which is more than half of most people’s salary. Some people are so desperate they camp out on the beach or even live in caves,” he confided.
![Greece, Santorini](/https/www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/travel/2023/08/31/TELEMMGLPICT000347415279_16934739323180_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqYbHyc_BzkV-wGdElElElaKAezwuvexs_ues-aCB_TCg.jpeg?imwidth=350)
Nikos Boutsinis owns Santorini Walking Tours, a company that showcases another side of the island. Far from Oia’s congested streets, he showed me abandoned Byzantine churches, flocks of grazing sheep and tiny villages like Exo Gonia, Pyrgos and Emborio, with cobbled streets, old stone houses and vine-shaded tavernas that don’t charge a fortune. “There is a network of pretty paths that no one seems to be walking on – people miss so much if they just stay in Fira and Oia,” he said.
Lefteris Zorzos, who owns Voreina Gallery Suites, a boutique hotel in Pyrgos that gazes out over vineyards, agrees. “Our guests can stay here and enjoy the peace and quiet whilst experiencing a traditional side to the island,” he said. “At the same time they are within easy reach of all the sights, but they don’t have all the caldera crowds. Surely that’s the perfect combination?”