Whereas there are about 200 inhabited Greek islands, one of the enduring photos of Greece’s summer time tourism is the world-renowned sundown on Santorini.
Framed by sea-blue church domes with white facades on a jagged cliff above a volcanic caldera. It is a scene that impressed tens of millions of posters, souvenirs and social media posts.
Santorini is a must-see on the Greek cruise checklist. Of the file 32.7 million people who visited Greece final 12 months, 3.4 million – or one in 10 – went to the island of simply 15,500 residents.
However in consequence, the queues to succeed in the viewing spot within the clifftop village of Oia on “Instagram island” can now take greater than 20 minutes.
Because the solar begins to set, 1000’s of vacationers carry their telephones to seize photos of the second, extra involved about posting on social media than having fun with the second which they’ll have spent lots of, if not 1000’s of kilos to get to in particular person.
On Instagram, as of September 12 there are 8.2 million posts utilizing the hashtag #santorini, with an extra 185,000 for #santorinisunset.
Scrolling by means of, all of the posts look the identical: {couples} or ladies in lovely clothes and lengthy skirts posing with the white and blue city within the background or staring out to sea with the sky a fantastic color of orange and yellow.
Very hardly ever does one come throughout an image of a vacationers’ meal in one in all Santorini’s conventional Greek eating places, and even then, there’s most likely a sea of individuals or plenty of cruise ships within the background.
“Simply obtain the image from Google and benefit from the second,” stated Florian Wupperfeld to Categorical.co.uk. Florian is a world-leading social sustainability and placemaking skilled and CEO of LCD Ventures, a UK-based vacation spot innovation firm.
He argued that at the moment, “folks must have this proof that they have been there as a part of their narrative. ‘Who am I? I’ve been to Santorini’.”
As many as 17,000 cruise ship passengers, one of many predominant sources of holiday makers, surge onto the island on peak days in excessive season, headed straight to hotspots such because the capital Fira and Oia on the northwest tip.
The slender cobbled streets and cliffside balconies are stuffed with vacationers packed in like sardines looking for selfies, disturbing the locals as they try and go about their day by day enterprise.
“It’s a little bit bit unhappy that it turns into virtually like a badge that you could purchase and they don’t seem to be partaking [with the island]. They go there, they drink Aperol Spritz, which is Italian, they’ve sushi, which is Japanese.”
Within the late Twentieth-century, Santorini was a sleepy island the place most locals profited from agriculture as a substitute of tourism. Nonetheless, customer numbers grew from the Nineteen Sixties because it gained a repute for its beautiful views and iconic structure. Infrastructure and growth on the island, nevertheless, didn’t sustain with the tempo.
So we come to that standard phrase: Instagram vs Actuality. What’s Santorini actually like? Behind the scenes is an island the place residents are overwhelmed and even displaced from their very own properties.
Some days, locals are awoken to the sound of footsteps and conversations as trespassing vacationers stroll throughout their roofs in an try and get the proper image.
Among the island’s buildings are centuries previous – not designed to deal with the fixed foot site visitors that Santorini now experiences.
This has led to structural harm, inflicting pricey repairs which can be left to the homeowners to cowl. Locals have taken to putting in indicators that say “don’t climb”, “non-public property”, and “hold out”.
“We overlook how necessary magnificence is in tourism,” argued Mr Wupperfeld. “We need to go to lovely locations… we’re forgetting the structure and the way we cope with people who reside there. It’s not going to be a fantastic expertise if we don’t care for the folks. And then you definitely don’t have something good for Instagram!”
It isn’t simply Santorini that’s tormented by the social media drawback, Mr Wupperfeld argued. “While you went to Ibiza ten years in the past, everybody was dancing with one another. Now everyone seems to be simply holding [their] cameras and no person is dancing anymore.”
“Cell phones make you very lonely. We may have an enormous situation with that.
“Tourism is about engagement and expertise and simply placing it in your phone is all about bragging and getting the badge – that isn’t what tourism is about. That is what wants to alter.”