Anniversary Confessions
Since the beginning of the decade I’ve been watching closely the course and development of the unique successful event for the promotion of tourist services in yachting. “Closely”, meaning that I’ve been following and writing about the efforts of the Hellenic Professional Yacht Owners Association and the Hellenic Yacht Brokers Association that started a Yacht Show capable of standing up to international standards in order to promote yachting and, by extension, Greece.
During each year of this decade the opening ceremony has been saluted by different politicians brimming with verbal or ideological plans and suggestions for development, revival of hopes, support, etc. Let me just remind you of those ambitious plans of Minister Fani Pali Petralia, who was then chairing the talks of the National Board of Tourism, for the development of sea tourism, cruise and scuba diving tourism with the support of the then Minister of Merchantile Marine (Manolis Kefalogiannis). Back then I broadcast the following through one of the media of those days: “Ms Fani Pali Petralia stressed the fact that
all possible difficulties will be overcome in order to take the necessary decisions to develop the aforementioned types of tourism, without considering the political cost. Haven’t we heard this before?” Later on, I played out the detective to discover the following:
“According to reliable information, the ministry board is working on ways to reinforce promotional activities, among which the production of a luxury 200-page edition on sea tourism which will be distributed to each tourism exhibition abroad. Moreover, the programme titled Paths of Sea Tourism is meant to link areas of great historic and political importance so as to make them accessible to yachts. To this end, one of the priorities shall be to connect the 16 monuments of world heritage...”
None of the above plans was materialized. Five years after that story was written, I confess that if I change the names, titles and dates, it would still be a realistic rendering of what happened this year at the event.
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