Greece was, as usual, one of the big names in the World Travel Market 2014 show at Excel. The press conference of Mrs Olga Kefalogianni, the Greek Minister of Tourism looked twice oversubscribed with people jostling in the aisles. Events started during the week before the WTM: a Cyclades cuisine dinner, a Greek alternative music […]
Greek taxes: a Minoan labyrinth
My latest foray to Greece and its islands was fab as usual. The September sun was shining, the sea was warm and the public discourse dominated by the tax modernisation requested by the EU, the ECB and the IMF (the ‘troïka’). The subject was the abolition of 199 taxes towards third parties imposed by the […]
Greece: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Fix Hellas I know that “Fix Hellas” sounds like a cry of despair, but anyone who’s travelled to Greece before the early 1980s surely remembers ordering and drinking Fix Hellas, the only beer produced in Greece with a national distribution network. The country’s Soviet-style industry control system, import controls and a small domestic market ensured […]