From a booth facing the ferries moored at Piraeus, Tassos Papadopoulos cuts tickets for passengers heading to the isles of the Saronic Gulf.
It’s 5pm on a hot summer’s day and through the sun-streaked haze he takes in the cars and trucks lining up to cross the steel ramp into the hold of the Aegina-bound vessel. Last year the queues were much longer. “People aren’t travelling it seems,” he says with a shrug. “The weekend traffic is heavier but ticket sales are down by, I’d say, 50%.”
Shimmering within view of the hills beneath the Acropolis, the Argo-Saronic isles are popular precisely because of their proximity to Athens. In 2024 Aegina attracted more than 2 million visitors, many budget-conscious Greeks drawn by the island’s affordable ferry fares.
“This time, last August, all the loungers over there were taken by 10am,” says Konstantinos Tsantas, who runs a watersports business on shores framed by the jagged outline of the Peloponnese beyond. “This year they’re empty. I know watersports people all over the country and they all say the same: that business is down. And to think, Aegina is comparatively cheap.”
2025 will be remembered as the year Greeks decided to forfeit their annual pilgrimage to the beach. Immortalised by singers and songwriters, poets and cinematographers, the carefree joys of summer have, for many, fallen prey to the harsh reality of making ends meet.
“Our studies show that one in two Greeks will not go on holiday this year,” says Takis Kalofonos, chief financial adviser at EEKE, the union of working consumers of Greece.
“Whereas 10 years ago people would take 20 or even 30 days off, this summer it’s less than a week. The Cyclades and islands further out are a distant dream for many Greeks. Who can pay €450 on boat tickets, which is what it would cost a family of four with a car, when the average salary is €1,342 a month?”
The great August retreat – often centred on the religious festival of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary on 15 August – has for many been whittled down to days spent with family or friends in villages on the mainland.
“I’d love to spend time in Amorgos but getting to an island so far away is just out of bounds,” said Ismini Balale, who is 28 and struggling to survive on a retail sector salary of €850 a month. “I can’t cough up €200 a night for a room. All my friends are in the same position, and we all have postgraduate degrees. We’re taking a few days off, here and there, this summer.”
The European Statistics agency, Eurostat, recently endorsed EEKE’s findings, announcing that 46% of Greeks – 19% higher than the rest of the EU – were unable to afford a one-week holiday last year.
In Athens, August has given way to once unimaginable scenes: the public transport system is bursting; traffic in the city centre has barely thinned; seats at open-air cinemas are sold out and bars and fast food eateries are teeming with young Greeks who have been unable to get away.
“They talk about our country’s economic recovery but none of those positive indices affect people like me,” says Balale. “And I don’t think this government much cares.”
Paradoxically, it is partly because Greece is such a perfect place for holidays that Greeks are increasingly unable to afford them. The arrival of 36 million travellers last year – nearly four times the resident population – has ensured the Mediterranean country is one of the top 10 go-to places globally. The sector brought an estimated €21.7bn in revenue in 2024, helping Athens reduce its gargantuan public debt load from 180% of GDP, at the height of the nation’s excoriating debt crisis, to 153.6%.
But while tourism is the engine of the Greek economy, providing at least one in five jobs, success has also resulted in soaring prices. Wages, by contrast, have remained stagnant, outpaced by inflation rates that have far outstripped other EU countries, prompting a steep rise in the cost of living. Those who do manage to put money aside say increasingly they find it cheaper to holiday abroad than within Greece.
An Alco poll in June revealed rocketing accommodation costs, ferry fares and restaurant prices as the main impediments to travel.
“Greeks are being priced out from enjoying what was a cultural and religious tradition, the August holiday,” says Prof Christos Pitelis, an expert on industrial economics and the tourism and hospitality sector at the University of Southampton. “Dwindling disposable incomes make this an experience many simply cannot afford.”
With the middle class hit hardest by austerity measures that were the price of the bankrupt Greek economy’s rescue by international creditors a decade ago, the prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said relief measures are on the way. His centre-right government has pledged to bring down taxes and raise the average monthly wage to €1,500 by 2027.
But it is not lost on Greeks that while foreign visitors can savour the natural beauty and other joys of their country, such pleasures for them have become a bittersweet memory.
“We are the Thailand of Europe; we provide services for others to enjoy,” says Aris Apikian, taking in the passing tourists outside the carpet shop where he works in central Athens. “While foreigners live their dreams in Greece, we experience the sharp end of everything that is wrong with it. Who wants to go on holiday when they’re told energy bills, you name it, are about to rise? I think the penny is beginning to drop, now that we cannot afford to take even a week off, that it’s us Greeks, who are the real losers.”
