Entry to some of Greece’s most famous museums and monuments is to become significantly more expensive after the country’s government announced price rises that could go as high as 150%.
The country wants to raise more money from its tourism industry and is targeting the “unacceptably low” fees its government feels tourists pay to see sites such as the Acropolis.
Prices at the Athens monument are to rise by about 66% from €12 (£8.90) to €20 and those for the ruins of Knossos in Crete, Europe’s oldest city, are to jump 150% from €6 to €15, the federation of Greek travel agents said.
Prices at other popular sites and museums would double, according to Greece’s culture ministry. The full price rises are to come in from April to November 2016, with a 50% discount for the rest of the year, it said.
Officials reportedly said the prices at Greece’s 200 state museums would be affected. The increases would reportedly apply to sites such as ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games, while tours of Greece’s approximately 20,000 archaeological dig sites – previously free – would also cost more under the plans.
The Greek government argued that additional revenues from the price rise could offset austerity measures demanded by international bailout creditors, such as higher taxation on all private education.
“The price adjustments put the rates on a par with those in the rest of Europe,” the Times (£) quoted a culture ministry official, Ioanna Baltsou, as saying. Admission to Britain’s most popular attractions is free. But the cheapest adult ticket to the Tower of London, the most visited paid-for site in Britain, currently costs £23.10.
Baltsou reportedly added that Greece’s 1.2 million unemployed people would be granted free entry, while tourists visiting during the off-peak season – November to April – would be given 50% discounts.
The move comes despite concerns expressed by Greek travel agents that the price rises would drive tourists away. Tourism is a key industry in Greece, with a reported 26 million tourists visiting the country each year.
The federation of Greek travel agents said it wrote to the country’s prime minister Alexis Tsipras, as well as its culture ministry, to ask that the price rises not be “enforced abruptly”. It said they should instead be introduced gradually over a three-year period.
“The value-added tax hikes on all goods and tourism services, as well as the announced increases to the ticket prices of museums and archaeological sites, burden the travel package so much that it will become uncompetitive in the end”, the federation’s president, Lysandros Tsilidis, said.
