A beautiful ancient tombstone unveiled today by the teams that set the drainage pipe in Perissa.

This is a beautiful work of art, the age of which still remains undetermined. Under exclusive statement of the Mayor iof Thira at neasantorinis.gr, archaeologist arrives rushed tomorrow to the island to investigate the find.

Source: www.neasantorinis.gr

Filming of the new series of the ANT1 TV ‘The sin of his mother’ starts tomorrow morning in Santorini.

The director, Alexandros Rigas, with the actors (Louizidou, Antonopoulos, Tziova, Simardani etc.) should come to the island since the first episode of the series unfolds much of Santorini. However the weather conditions these days in the Aegean is not very favorable.

The series is to be start screening in 23/2 on ANT1 TV.

Source: www.zougla.gr

A press conference gave Friday, November 19 in the PHILOXENIA 2011 both Deputy Ministers of Culture and Tourism.

As the best historical year for Greek tourism, is described the 2011 by the Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mr. Nikitiadis, noting that the 16.5 million arrivals may be overcome, while revenues will follow the relatve unprecedented levels.

As stated by Mr. Nikitiadis, this performance was succeeded with 1/3 of costs for implementation of tourism policy, compared with 2009.

The new Minister of Culture and Tourism, Mr Petros Alivizatos stressed that the results from tourism is better than expected, while adding that the design of the country’s tourism strategy needs to have 20-year horizon.

Commenting on the results of tourism policy exercise, Mr. Nikitiadis said he joined the foundation to change strategy and give a different message for Greece than the one so far.

For the next steps of tourism development of, he reffered among others to:

- a bill for rural tourism, which focuses on fishing actions, wine tourism and agritourism is ready

- the strategy for conferense tourism, where additional steps are necessary, is on thw way

- intensifying efforts to attract more cruise ships in Greek ports. The cruise at full growth can add up to 4 units in the country’s GDP, but needs and implement the necessary port infrastructure. The Deputy Minister appeared confident that the complete removal of cabotage will soon become reality.

About attracting tourists from new markets, an agreement promoted especially about Russia, so that the greatest Russian tour-operators to become  Visa-centers for our country, an initiative that is expected to ‘launch’ the arrival of visitors to Greece.

Source: www.helexpo.gr

French websites of Expedia, TripAdvisor and Hotels.com are obliged to change their unfair practices with regard to provision of information hotel availability and prices, according to a French Court ruling.

SYNHORCAT, one of the French HOTREC member associations, had launched a case at the Paris Commercial Court, claiming that the above mentioned websites were providing misleading and false information. As an example, Hotels.com and expedia.fr were claiming at some hotel booking searches ‘No rooms are available at the selected dates’, but that was only true for bookings via that site, because rooms were still available via direct booking or other channels. This practice was unreasonably drifting away guests to other accommodation providers in the neighborhood, causing economic damage to hoteliers.

In its ruling of 4 October 2011, the Court supported SYNHORCAT’s claim and obliged the French websites of Expedia, TripAdvisor and Hotels.com to change their unfair practices and to pay compensation for the damage caused to the French hotel industry.

Didier Chenet, President of SYNHORCAT, further explained: ‘We will continue pursuing the adoption of fair practices in other areas of online distribution as well, like the authenticity of travellers’ opinions, legality of contracts between hoteliers and reservation sites, including fair practices in relation to reservations of restaurants‘.

This ruling is an important milestone also with regard to HOTREC’s efforts to clean the online hotel distribution market from unfair practices.

Kent Nystrom, President of HOTREC, congratulated SYNHORCAT and the French hotel industry for the successful results and stated: ‘HOTREC will always offer its support to all parties who are working for the establishment of an equal and fair level playing field for the benefit of hoteliers, consumers and online booking and review providers‘.

Source: www.traveldailynews.com

Rihanna, the famous singer is coming to Santorini on August 20th. More information you will find here:  http://www.santorini-photographer.com/rihanna-in-santorini/

Facebook and Skype are joining forces to bring video chat to the social networking site. The service, initially limited to one-to-one video calling, will be free of charge.

Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg announced the move as he revealed that his creation now has a record 750 million users.

The video chat deal deepens Facebook’s co-operation with Microsoft which is in the process of buying Skype.

Source: EuroNews

Thousands of tourists are flocking to Athens despite the recent violent clashes between police and protesters.

The anti-austerity demonstrations, complete with fires, fights and tear gas, may have hurt Greece’s image abroad, but tourism officials believe the sector will do well this year.

In Greece, tourism accounts for one in five jobs and 16 percent GDP and some tourists feel coming here is a way to support the crisis-hit country.

[Jack, Tourist from Sweden]:
‘This is the time to support the Greeks, not to leave them behind.‘

[Adrian, U.S. Tourist from California]:
‘My husband and I were not there actually for the riots but we had this trip to Greece planned for well over a year now and much to our surprise the riots occurred, and the tour company that we are over here on made certain they opted for the fact that they wanted our group’s safety, that was pre-eminent, that came first. And so as a result they relocated our group to a very lovely hotel outside of Athens to prevent us from being in the center. However, just yesterday we were moved to the Grande Bretagne and had a chance to see where the protests occurred and parliament, and be able to really live history.‘

These tourists from Spain say they understand the demonstrators and aren’t discouraged from visiting Greece.

[Marta, Spanish Tourist from Segovia]:
‘It is like in Spain. We have the same situation. The people in Spain demonstrated because the situation there is very bad. So I think it is a normal reaction.’

Austerity measures passed by parliament to deal with Greece’s debt crisis saw two days of violent clashes between police and protesters.

The riots took place in the city center, around the parliament building, with injuries to both demonstrators and police.

Source: www.ntdtv.com