Thomas Cook makes pledge to invest in Greece
Thomas Cook will send three million customers to Greece in 2018, up more than a third on two years ago.
The travel giant said it will invest around €150 million in the Greek tourism industry this year, an increase of 22% on 2016.
Chief executive Peter Fankhauser confirmed the commitment to Greek Tourism Minister Elena Kountoura at an event in Crete last night.
He said Thomas Cook had opened up four new destinations in the country and has added more than 34 new routes in the last two years alone, making it the largest holiday company operating into Greece.
"Greece has grown fast in the last two years to become Thomas Cook’s second-biggest destination," said Fankhauser.
"Since 2016, we have opened up new regions to our customers including Northern Greece; added new airline routes into the country and its many beautiful islands; and innovated with the launch of our two new own-brand concepts, Casa Cook and Cook’s Club.
"Our relationships with our own-brand hotel partners locally here in Greece are some of our most important and we hope to accelerate the growth in our own-brand hotel portfolio in Greece with the launch this spring of our hotel investment fund.
"We are keen to talk to potential partners who are looking for hotel management agreements and franchise arrangements as well as owners of hotels in prime sun and beach locations that we can acquire and refurbish before re-launching as one of our portfolio of eight hotel brands."
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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