While consumption has not yet returned to normal levels, this summer, Greek beer was the undisputed champion. Greek beer sales showed a significant increase in consumption by Greeks, as well as tourists. According to Greek news, market experts estimate that during 2014, beer sales will increase from 2% to 5% and that despite the disappointing news of bad weather during summer 2014, beer sales will make a dramatic rebound.
The production of several types of beer, the active operation of small breweries, as well as advertising, helped keep customers interested in the product.
Small breweries made a small revolution in Greece over the last five years. Despite competing against multinational companies such as Heineken and Carlsberg, new small breweries have started operating across Greece, producing quality products and implementing innovative ideas.
To read more, please visit greekreporter.com
By Ioanna Zikakou
Greek beer “Nissos” won the silver European Beer Star Award in the category Bohemian Pilsner in an international competition that took place in Bavaria, Germany, yesterday. This is the first time ever that a Greek beer wins such an award.
Nissos (island in Greek) is brewed on the island of Tinos. The microbrewery is in the Vaya village and it was founded by Alexandros Kouris, Maya Tsokli, Elina and Costis Dellis. Tsokli is a well-known Greek journalist and travel commentator. The first batches appeared in liquor stores, bars and restaurants in April 2013. Since then, its flavor has won many beer drinkers in Greece.
The founders say that Nissos was inspired by the rich colors and flavors of the Greek islands, the golden sun, the blue sea and sand of the Aegean Sea. It is also the work of local artisans, using the finest quality ingredients growing in the Greek soil.
To read more, please visit greekreporter.com
By Philip Chrysopoulos
Lamda Development presented plans on Tuesday for the utilization of the old airport plot at Elliniko, southern Athens, with the investors who have undertaken the development of the 6.3-square kilometer site (the Latsis Group’s Lamda, Al Maabar from the United Arab Emirates and China’s Fosun Group) claiming they are ready to start work at Elliniko from today.
However a more realistic target would be 2016, when the 7-billion-euro investment is expected to start.
The project aims to to create a destination of global appeal that will increase the annual tourism flow to the Greek capital to 3 million visitors from 2 million today.
It will include a 2 sq.km metropolitan park, a 3.5 km seafront and supplementary infrastructure such as roads, squares, utility networks, and a tram link with metro stations, among others.
To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com
Fourteen years at Deutsche Bank gave Mareva Grabowski a keen sense for business. But the Harvard MBA, who had gone on to found her own an asset management firm, was searching for something more. “I had money in the bank and a secure future. And to a certain extent, I enjoyed my job, but the satisfaction I gained from work was waning. I wanted to give something back.”
In her native Greece, the economy was crashing. “Life was literally ending,” deadpans Grabowski over the phone from Paris. “Every day another shop would close, there would be a new story of suicide in the papers, people were desperate.”
But the sense of despair, palpable on the streets of Athens, was not financial alone. A deeper, existential crisis was bubbling beneath the boarded-up windows and empty cash registers. Generous salaries, secure pensions and a low retirement age had made public sector jobs the most sought after in the country. “This mindset was thrown into disarray when people started getting fired,” says Grabowski. “Everything they believed in no longer existed.”
Two years later, Grabowski was sitting in the kitchen of Dimitra Kolotoura, the founder of Greek travel and tourism communications company DK Associates, reading a copy of The Economist. The two friends would often meet to discuss how things might be improved. “That day, we were talking about an article I was reading,” recalls Grabowski. “It detailed how skilled craftsmanship in Greece was dying out in the crisis and that struck us both as deeply sad. We decided to take a few trips to see what was still being made out there; and as we both love fashion, apparel seemed like an obvious place to start.”
The pair embarked on a year-long quest, dipping in and out of workshops, finding the finest craft-makers in the country and, ultimately, decided to start working with the Conis family, known for their traditional leather sandals. “We must have seemed absolutely insane,” laughs Kolotoura. “At the time, they had no customers, Athens was burning and there we were — two women, giving them sketches of our perfect sandal and how we wanted it made.”
To read more, please visit businessoffashion.com
The organization of sporting activities at popular Greek destinations has helped to extend the tourism season and brought additional revenues to sector professionals. Among the big events in the coming weeks are the Navarino Challenge marathon this weekend, September 19-21, and the Spetses minimarathon on October 10-12.
Greek-American runner Dean Karnazes will again be participating in the Navarino Challenge, raising awareness about childhood obesity and highlighting the benefits of the Mediterranean diet and sports. The event includes a 15-kilometer run at Kalamata, and a half-marathon of 21.1 km and the 1-km and 5-km races at Costa Navarino in the southwestern Peloponnese.
Spetses will be hosting its minimarathon for the fourth year in a row. At a press conference on Tuesday in Athens, the head of the organizing committee, Marina Lyda Koutarelli, said athletes and visitors will exceed 10,000 this year, of whom some 20 percent will be foreigners from 17 countries.
To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com
By Stathis Kousounis
In an era when online travel agencies dominate hotel bookings, there is still a broad strip of the accommodation industry that largely remains untapped by the web. Hundreds of thousands of lodgings, bnbs, inns or rooms to let -however they are called- are servicing millions of guests worldwide, despite being stuck with legacy tools, that make it hard for them to get discovered and hard to manage.
To give an example, in Greece alone there are about 40 thousand “rooms to let” facilities. Most of them do not have an online booking option, as a result of managing their reservations on paper ledgers or raw excel files.
Discoveroom comes to change the scene and help this sector flourish. With a mobile app for reservations management that has been built from day one with small lodging owners in mind, it provides a solid basis to make lodgings’ operations efficient, for owners and guests alike.
The first version of the app for iOS and Android was released a couple of months ago, and is already being used by hundreds of lodgings, mostly in Greece, but also in geographies as disparate as South Africa, Malaysia and Alaska.
To read more, please visit greekreporter.com
Salty bag is the materialised original idea of giving a second life to already useless sails that belongs to four young Greeks from Corfu. Their idea to recycle the sails from the waste was born a little over a year ago.
Stratis, Spiros, Panos and Chrissa decided to continue the voyage of the sails, although not at sea but in different places, by turning them into small and large bags, briefcases, travel bags and small daily accessories. As they say, they give a "second chance to tired heroes."
Today the "salty" bags are offered in 12 shops in Greece and on the website of the company. "We are happy that we are making bags from a material that tells a story. The sails we use are worn out, they are no longer aerodynamic and so, they cannot be used in sailing. However, they are still very durable and can be used for a long time," Business Development Manager of the company Stratis Andreadis, who is a sailing racer and 33rd in the world ranking, told GRReporter.
In the beginning, they used the sails found in the waste. Now sailors can donate the useless sails. A note telling the story of the sail, namely the miles it sailed, the seas, the winds it encountered and the ports it visited, accompanies each bag. "Each bag is unique. It is distinguished by the fabric, the colour and age of the sail from which it is made. On our bags you will see signs of use, of the elements and time."
The "salty" bags are handmade and Chrissa is their designer. The sails are washed using an environmentally friendly method. The company employs six people and the staff will grow depending on the progress of its activity.
The interest in the bags by Salty bag is huge, states Stratis. "We are overwhelmed by numerous positive reactions and messages and this is very encouraging for our efforts. Within eight months we have won almost 5,000 friends on Facebook, other people had become acquainted with our products in the 18 shops that sold them last summer." The company sells 30% of its products abroad and in the summer of 2014, they will be available in 25 shops.
Soon Salty bag will launch a new series of products called "Road to Rio". "For it we will use sails that have a great history as they are the winners of world championships and Olympic medals. We will provide a large portion of the sales proceeds to sailing teams that want to participate in the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. So, on one hand we will be able to get closer to the efforts of the Greek talents in this sport and on the other, we will contribute towards their participation in this great sporting event," adds Stratis.
By Anastasia Balezdrova
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Over 70,000 jobs will be created in the long term through the planned development of the former airport at Elliniko, southern Athens, an updated report by the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) showed on Wednesday.
The report highlights that the project is set to utilize a vast area that is today in a state of neglect while strengthening demand for labor and boosting the country’s gross domestic product and tourism, rendering Elliniko a global destination.
The study argues that in the 2016-31 period the project will help the Greek GDP to grow by 1.5 percent more than it would without the development.
To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com
Aegean Airlines announced on Tuesday it is adding 16 new destinations in 10 new countries to its network next summer, reaching a total of 134 destinations, 34 domestic and 100 abroad in 42 countries.
The airline’s network will as of next year add Helsinki in Finland, Toulouse, Deauville and Metz in France, Naples and Pisa in Italy, Malta, Kuwait, Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Paphos in Cyprus, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia, Tallinn in Estonia, Oslo in Norway, Tehran in Iran, Dubrovnik in Croatia and Yerevan in Armenia.
Aegean will also increase its flights from major markets for Greek tourism such as Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy, and to popular island destinations such as Naxos, Milos and Paros.
The 2015 schedule of Greece’s main carrier will offer 15 million seats, up 2 million from 2014, as its summer schedule has evolved into a stronger one than initially planned, with more new destinations, given that the growth prospects of the company appear particularly positive.
To read more, please visit ekathimerini.com
By Alexandra Kassimi
Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission has selected seven of the hottest Greek tech start-up projects with international reach, following her StartUpEurope Tour stop in Athens.
Those include: Helic, a technology smashing smartphone barriers globally and allowing them to become smaller, thinner, lighter and cheaper; Raycap, a system that protects crucial electronic infrastructure (in telecoms, industrial automation, defence, power generation, etc.) from extreme weather conditions;
Constelex, a company that develops optical fibre amplifiers and photonic systems for future fibre-optic communication networks; Taxibeat, a free application allowing you to choose the nearest taxi based on desired features; Cookisto, an online community where users can find home-cooked dishes prepared by local cooks or post their own dishes; Corallia, a platform with a view to helping innovation clusters start and grow; The Egg, a program which helps innovative entrepreneurs start their business!