Enjoy your holiday at Greece with the help of Travelhorns.

Meteora - Greece (by Anna Jewels (@earthpeek))

https://www.instagram.com/earthpeek/

Old yellow house in Plaka district (Athens, Greece)

Travel poster for Mount Athos, featuring the Monastery of Simonos Petra (1949).

Amorgos, Cyclades-Greece 🇬🇷❤️

Summer in the Greek islands 🇬🇷 !.

Enjoy your holiday at Greece with the help of Travelhorns.

Plaka, Athens ♥

Greece travel poster featuring a mosaic of three ships sailing under a bright red sun (1967). Artwork by G. Vakirtzis.

What is a more ethical way to visit Greece in terms of lodging? Like in terms of over development in the tourist sector? Hotels or air bnb or hostiles?

That’s a good question. With the assumption that there is the budget for any of these, my recommendation is definitely:

Hotels >> Hostels >>> Airbnbs

With an ethical perspective. (With a quality perspective I would probably switch hostels with airbnbs.)

Hostels are not particularly developed in Greece. It can be an okay choice though, especially if you do not care about many amenities, you are young and don’t have too particular needs / preferences or are tight on budget. But it is 90% the lowest quality option in Greece.

Greek airbnbs can vary from mediocre to awesome and you can find okay places for very good prices. However, it is the least ethical option. Yes, it’s usually people renting a property for some more income but a) many rich people with a LOT of properties turn all of them into airbnbs or buy more and more properties to use them exclusively as airbnbs and b) Greece is one of the countries that has started facing very serious problems due to the uncontrollable expansion of airbnbs. The government is trying now to set some limitations to them. Especially the most touristy areas have huge issues since all property owners - regardless of income - turn their apartments into airbnbs, making it impossible for local people and critically important professions such as teachers and doctors to find houses on normal rent to stay. As a result they are forced to quit on their jobs and touristy yet remote places such as islands and traditional towns are left without teachers and doctors and generally suffer from an imbalance of necessary services. There are now just tourists, restaurant owners and airbnb owners frenchkissing or something there and that’s it. Sometimes, when the need for them is too bad yet people still insist on turning their houses to airbnbs, teachers and doctors end up sleeping in rooms or yards or rooftops of the local owners. That shit has turned into a dystopia. Furthermore, the rise of airbnbs has been causing big problems in cities and non-touristy areas as the cost of rent has skyrocketed (as the incentive for house owners to not make their property an airbnb) which makes it impossible for students and young people to find apartments in reasonable and affordable prices! I don’t care if anyone reading this has airbnbs and is pissed, airbnb is unethical in touristy countries!!!

Because Greece is a touristy country there is a huge variety of hotels to choose from, all quality types, all types of businesses. Greece is a country with MANY family run hotel businesses that can have great quality and can provide a cozy environment even better than airbnbs do. There are obviously also many big shark hotel chains but they are not the standard. The standard are the family run hotels. You can usually tell by the websites whether a hotel is part of a chain. For example, the Hiltons are foreign sharks. The Domotels are Greek sharks. But even so, even the sharks, honestly they do not cause a lot of problems. Usually they are expensive large hotels with all sorts of amenities, big breakfasts, nice environments.

There are some concerns about hotels lately getting overbuilt in environmentally sensitive areas but that is also the case for private properties intended to be used as airbnbs. This is something you as a tourist can’t possibly guess. But hotels - big chains or not - definitely cause fewer problems in the society compared to airbnbs.

But if you want both an ethical choice and good services opt for a small or medium sized hotel that is not part of a chain. Usually most of them are of the 3 star and the 4 star range, but you can find lower and higher as well. Those are often called boutique hotels.

Last but not least, a whopping 80% of the services sector in Greece is tourism, therefore all these people need tourists to go to hotels to make an income and help economy run smoothly. We are not talking about the sharks here, but simple owners who have to sustain the hotels, receptionists, cleaners, waiters, cooks and all other professions involved in a hotel. Let alone that the sharks employ a gazillion of people that have to make a living - gardeners, physiotherapists, gymnasts, drivers and so on. Airbnbs are antagonising that 80% of the service economy trying to steal tourism’s profit and turn it into their personal side income.

I know I didn’t have to write all this but I am passionate about this topic.