The Olympic Games of 2004 in Athens, helped the country to implement changes and improvements in the Greek infrastructure (
www.investingreece.gov.gr,
2010). A few of the changes occurred in the tourism strategy as well
that slightly used music in the past to promote tourism in Greece. The
popularity of Eurovision song contest in Greece made the Ministry of
Greek Culture and Tourism to name ambassadors of Greece, Sakis Rouvas
in 2009 (Eleftherotypia,2009) and Helena Paparizou in 2005 (Paravantes,
2005). The ministry financed the touring of the 2 pop idols and
co-promoted Greece as a tourist destination.
Nowadays the recent economic crisis in Greece that initially struck
in 2008 (Organization for European Economic Cooperation,2010) has
prevented the government to finance music activities (
www.avopolis.gr,
2008) but the competitive advantages of the country along with tourism
trends remain the best practice for music tourism in Greece. The
demographics change in the world are going to have an impact at the
young who work fulltime and may choose to relax on holiday (World
Tourism Organization,2010). Greece is attracting young tourists that
look for holidays activities which offer them knowledge and
understanding of cultural activities (Chaitip, Chaiboonsri, Kovács,
Balogh, 2010) . The cultural activities in Greece are very popular,
especially music concerts with foreign artists because they have great
attendance (
www.mixgrill.gr , 2008).
Greece is located in the Southeast Europe in an area of 131, 990
sq. km and the border countries are: Albania (282 km), Bulgaria (494
km), Turkey (206 km), FYROM (246 km) (
www.investingreece.gov.gr,
2010). The country is considered the hub of the Southeast Europe
because Greek companies have a strong hold in this area and there’s a
constant mobility of goods and persons. This fact encourages young
people travel in Greece to attend concerts with major international
artists. According to Didi Music, during the summer Rockwave Festival
already attracts people from Balkans, Turkey and Israel (Loris, 2010).
In 2007 the majority of foreigners, who are EU citizens, like
2006, came from the UK (15%), Germany (12.9%) and Italy (6.6%) (2007,
Greek Ministry Of Economy and Finance). Communication is not going to be
a problem for all those visitors because
Greece has the largest
share of students (92%) studying one foreign language and the most
popular language is English (2006, Eurostat Press Office) . This fact
encourages foreigners visit Greece for Tourism every year because
English is used as the common language between tourist and hosts
(Sharma, 2004).
Ministry of Greek Tourism announced that the new strategy in 2011
is going to be experience based (Nikitiadis, 2010) and that’s why the
Ministry of Tourism created a web 2.0 site (
www.mygreece.gr)
. In this website, tourists share their experiences about various
points of attraction in Greece, including local festivals. The concept
of experience seems to very interesting as it fits with the plans of the
local concert promoters who consider music festivals” Unique
experience, great international and local bands to play, line up is
equal to the big European festivals, the weather is amazing, great Greek
hospitality” (Trantou,2010).
Article by : V. Yfantis, School of computing, University of the West Scotland, Paisley, UK, E-mail:
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