Israeli tourism to Greece surges, minister visits

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The number of Israelis visiting Greece grew from some 150,000 in 2010 to 400,000 last year, but to listen to Greece’s Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni is to believe this has more to do with Greece’s allures than to the Israeli-Turkish fracture that sent Israelis scrambling for cheap vacation alternatives nearby.

“The big increase came in 2010, and since then we have been having an increase in the number of visitors every year,” Kefalogianni said on Tuesday during a two-day visit to Israel. This was her first visit to the country.

That year, 2010, was when Greek-Israeli relations began to improve dramatically following a chance meeting in Moscow between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and then-Greek prime minister George Papandreou, and also was the year of the Mavi Marmara flotilla that sent Israeli-Turkish relations into a nosedive.

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