Santorini's SOS to America: Come back & pronto

But if you want to know when you can, don't just look to Athens...read on

You want a healthy serving of some Santorini? Well here’s some of what’s cooking…

The question I get more than any other these rather glum days is When can I come to Greece again? It’s a complicated situation that changes from day to day and it makes planning a tricky endeavor at best, but know that many folks on the island of Santorini, at least, share your frustration. The Santorini Hoteliers Association has just called on the Greek government to set a date for the re-opening of tourism.

In fact, in a letter it was noted specifically that without some clarity “Americans and all other travelers will be reluctant to make reservations.” They added that waiting until April or May to make an announcement that entry will be allowed again from June 1 would mean missing “at least half of the tourist season.”

Our view? We sympathize with the Santorini hotel owners who know that Americans represent the most coveted long-haul market in the world (and not just in Greece). And we fully support the Greek government’s prioritization of safety. The logjam as we see it comes from elsewhere: Eurocrats bungled vax procurements (& in their narrow world, admission of error is predictably conflated with clout) continent-wide but the knock-on effect is that the ban on “non-Schengen” entries into the E.U. is stuck in place like chocolate in raw croissant dough. Merci Bruxelles, you little world capital of bureaucratic torpor you!

If I were reading between the columns, as it were, I’d say that Santorini’s pleas while not going unheard may not yield the desired results so fast. Consider that American Airlines has announced resumption of non-stop JFK-Athens flights…but not before June. That’s a pretty good indicator that some big players have already written off the months of April and May, which has to be a huge disappointment for an island that had come to be known as one of the rare “year-round” tourist-friendly Greek islands.

In sum this is as much of a U.S.-E.U. issue as anything else. The question is not really when can Americans officially come back to Greece, but when can they start coming back to “Schengen zone” Europe? And considering the economic stakes here are probably already running into the billions of dollars, the person who needs to get an answer to that question and pronto is—obviously—Jen Psaki.

Update: German media are reporting that Greece is targeting vaccination certificate agreements with Britain “or even the USA” which would represent an expansion of the current, bilateral Greece-Israel travel corridor model.