Cruising to Greek Islands will be more expensive and passenger numbers more limited next year.

[terrydtx]

The Greek Government has passed new rules instigating new cruise ship passenger visitor fees for most Greek ports. Also, daily cruise ship passenger limits for Santorini and Mykonos will go into effect starting in 2025. After spending a week in Santorini last year, I can understand the new limits as we saw the small island and towns completely run over with cruise ship passengers every day.

 

Cruise Passengers to Pay New Fee to Visit Greek Islands (cruisehive.com)

Edited September 10 by terrydtx

[Cruise Junky]

Needed. They’re completely overrun. 

[terrydtx]

12 minutes ago, Cruise Junky said:

Needed. They’re completely overrun. 

It could be the end of Mega ships visiting Santorini and Mykonos. With the new daily 8000 passenger limits, 2 Mega ships could easily reach that number. 

[Sir PMP]

8 minutes ago, terrydtx said:

It could be the end of Mega ships visiting Santorini and Mykonos. With the new daily 8000 passenger limits, 2 Mega ships could easily reach that number. 

Great, let them hang around their private islands in the Caribbean.

[stevenr597]

1 hour ago, terrydtx said:

The Greek Government has passed new rules instigating new cruise ship passenger visitor fees for most Greek ports. Also, daily cruise ship passenger limits for Santorini and Mykonos will go into effect starting in 2025. After spending a week in Santorini last year, I can understand the new limits as we saw the small island and towns completely run over with cruise ship passengers every day.

 

Cruise Passengers to Pay New Fee to Visit Greek Islands (cruisehive.com)

We will be cruising the Greek Island, October, 2025.  Hopefully there will be fewer tourists. 

[NowVoyager2]

Thankfully ports are fighting the cruise lines w these floating boxes w thousands of day trippers.

Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona to name  a few have voiced or are putting in place limits, restrictions & entrance fees for such passengers.

 

I recently spent 3 1/2 months in Italy, Greece & Croatia - even in Rome w its sweltering heat (100 degrees)was packed w tourists.  I stayed mostly in hotels in cities for a week at a time.  Venice was very telling - during the day the tour groups ruined the atmosphere of the city completely - once 4 pm came around & the cruise tourists departed - the city returned to the magical & most beautiful place one could ever imagine!!!

On the Cunard Queen Victoria the ship anchored off Sorrento - I had a spent a week there a few weeks prior , so I stayed onboard.  while staying there for a week I discovered the main tourist area was a Disney version of what an American tourist expects of Sorrento / Italy.  And it was packed w tourists - while 2 blocks away I enjoyed better gelato & handmade pasta in local restaurants at half the cost  as the restaurants in the tourist area.

 

These mega ships are basically floating tin cans / malls  built to be discarded as soon as possible.

 

I'm glad the ports are fighting back.

[terrydtx]

16 minutes ago, NowVoyager2 said:

Thankfully ports are fighting the cruise lines w these floating boxes w thousands of day trippers.

Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona to name  a few have voiced or are putting in place limits, restrictions & entrance fees for such passengers.

 

I recently spent 3 1/2 months in Italy, Greece & Croatia - even in Rome w its sweltering heat (100 degrees)was packed w tourists.  I stayed mostly in hotels in cities for a week at a time.  Venice was very telling - during the day the tour groups ruined the atmosphere of the city completely - once 4 pm came around & the cruise tourists departed - the city returned to the magical & most beautiful place one could ever imagine!!!

On the Cunard Queen Victoria the ship anchored off Sorrento - I had a spent a week there a few weeks prior , so I stayed onboard.  while staying there for a week I discovered the main tourist area was a Disney version of what an American tourist expects of Sorrento / Italy.  And it was packed w tourists - while 2 blocks away I enjoyed better gelato & handmade pasta in local restaurants at half the cost  as the restaurants in the tourist area.

 

These mega ships are basically floating tin cans / malls  built to be discarded as soon as possible.

 

I'm glad the ports are fighting back.

The week we spent in Santorini last year was so overrun with cruise ship passengers during the day, but after they left at 5pm the restaurants and shops were so much more enjoyable when the locals came out.

[terrydtx]

28 minutes ago, stevenr597 said:

We will be cruising the Greek Island, October, 2025.  Hopefully there will be fewer tourists. 

With the new limitations on number of visitors many of next year's cruise itineraries, that include Santorini and Mykonos, will have to be changed to meet the ceilings.  Our 2022 Oosterdam cruise, which originally, included Santorini took it off the itinerary a month before departure because of the then limitations, which will be much stricter next year.

[Gail & Marty sailing away]

Makes sense.

[ExArkie]

2 hours ago, stevenr597 said:

We will be cruising the Greek Island, October, 2025.  Hopefully there will be fewer tourists. 

We were there at the beginning of October last year. Santorini and Mykonos were both overcrowded. 

[Sea42]

2 hours ago, terrydtx said:

With the new limitations on number of visitors many of next year's cruise itineraries, that include Santorini and Mykonos, will have to be changed to meet the ceilings.  Our 2022 Oosterdam cruise, which originally, included Santorini took it off the itinerary a month before departure because of the then limitations, which will be much stricter next year.

We've already planned to have a "sea day" on our port stop in Santorini in 2026. Hopefully they substitute a different island.

[ski ww]

The thing to do is if you can is cruise in the off season. The the last cruise of the season before they come back to Ft Lauderdale.

[EtaC]

The real solution is for cruise lines to start varying their itineraries and visit islands other than S&M. They all have scenic beauty along with views of windmills and whitewashed blue-domed churches on cliffs overlooking the sea.

[bennybear]

2 hours ago, EtaC said:

The real solution is for cruise lines to start varying their itineraries and visit islands other than S&M. They all have scenic beauty along with views of windmills and whitewashed blue-domed churches on cliffs overlooking the sea.

That’s a double edge,  many tourists want to go to the places they’ve heard of.   Agree that there are many other places,  but then what happens to them when they’re overrun.   Greece is best experienced on a land trip.  

[TRLD]

On 9/10/2024 at 8:21 AM, NowVoyager2 said:

Thankfully ports are fighting the cruise lines w these floating boxes w thousands of day trippers.

Amsterdam, Venice, Barcelona to name  a few have voiced or are putting in place limits, restrictions & entrance fees for such passengers.

 

I recently spent 3 1/2 months in Italy, Greece & Croatia - even in Rome w its sweltering heat (100 degrees)was packed w tourists.  I stayed mostly in hotels in cities for a week at a time.  Venice was very telling - during the day the tour groups ruined the atmosphere of the city completely - once 4 pm came around & the cruise tourists departed - the city returned to the magical & most beautiful place one could ever imagine!!!

On the Cunard Queen Victoria the ship anchored off Sorrento - I had a spent a week there a few weeks prior , so I stayed onboard.  while staying there for a week I discovered the main tourist area was a Disney version of what an American tourist expects of Sorrento / Italy.  And it was packed w tourists - while 2 blocks away I enjoyed better gelato & handmade pasta in local restaurants at half the cost  as the restaurants in the tourist area.

 

These mega ships are basically floating tin cans / malls  built to be discarded as soon as possible.

 

I'm glad the ports are fighting back.

In the case of Venice these days it is as much land tour companies and land based day trippers as cruise ships.  

Edited September 11 by TRLD

[TRLD]

22 minutes ago, bennybear said:

That’s a double edge,  many tourists want to go to the places they’ve heard of.   Agree that there are many other places,  but then what happens to them when they’re overrun.   Greece is best experienced on a land trip.  

Problem is, as Amsterdam has discovered, more than cruise ships.  Though cruise ships are pretty easy to restrict.  Take Mykonos for example.  Even without cruise ships it can get pretty packed. Some of the Greek islands have become major party destinations and hotel and vacation rental numbers have exploded. 

 

In addition to cruise ship restrictions Amsterdam is also looking at reducing hotel rooms in the core, restricting new hotels from being built there, converting existing ones for other uses, and limiting vacation rentals.  I expect some other main tourist destinations to take similar action.

 

We found a very nice way to visit Greece was on a 50 passenger boat that visited a number of the smaller islands.  While we did visit Santorini we started our visit a 4 and left at 11pm outside of the heavily crowded times.

 

The Greek islands are very easy to visit by ferry.  Spending a couple of days, then going on to the next.  Most islands have some kind of ferry access.

 

To be honest many of the main tourist cities have lost a lot of the charm they had 20 or for that matter even 10 years ago.

Edited September 11 by TRLD

[keysey222]

Perfect timing. We are spending 5 days in Santorini in May 2025. I'm a planner so I've already been working on our activities and I'm planning each day around which ships are in port and their capacity. I'll be relieved if the amounts are drastically less. The current amount of ships and passengers is completely excessive for such a small island. 

[SDARCH]

We were on the Med/Israel cruise last October.  Our stop at Mykonos was awful.  There were at least 4 large ships there including ours, the N.S.  It was literally shoulder to shoulder walking around the town.  We went back to the ship after one hour.

Something had to give as this was clearly unsustainable.