Are prices soaring?
Petrol currently retails at around £2.40 a litre and ferry, flight and food prices are creeping up across Greece.
A recent hotel price survey by Mabrian Technologies also revealed that, with an average price of €192 (£162) per night, Greece’s four-star hotels are the Med’s most expensive for July and August (its five-star properties are less expensive than France’s and Italy’s for the same period, however).
Are there any lingering Covid relics?
Entry rules and Covid passports have been ditched, as have masks (with the exception of health care settings; staff in hotels also tend to wear them). Rising infection rates mean Greeks are bracing themselves for the possible reintroduction of face coverings, however.
Back to normal rating: 4/5
With nearly every Covid rule discarded, the most popular resorts are packed.
Heidi Fuller-Love
The French Riviera
How chaotic are the airports?
“Very,” if the experience of microbiologist Dr Susanne Lee is anything to go by. After the cancellation of her mid-afternoon BA flight from Nice to Heathrow last Sunday, she and husband John manage to bag a later departure, for almost £600 each. “We got home after 3am; it wasn’t a good end to a short break,” said Dr Lee.
There are many similar stories but, oddly, it is probably true that Nice Airport – the Riviera’s main entry point – is less affected than many others. “We are more serene,” said airport spokesman Aymeric Staub. This is partly because the airport sacked no-one during lockdown. Staff were put on part-time, so they’d be in place when traffic took off again. “As we knew it would,” said Mr Staub. So few staff shortages. And no strikes, as undertaken by the Parisian airport’s personnel.
Obviously, the airport, like others across the south, is affected by staff shortages, strikes and the “build up of cascades of delays” suffered by airline companies. But taking “lack of airport personnel” out of the equation means that things aren’t quite as bad as elsewhere.
Are the beaches and resorts pre-pandemic busy?
Yes. More than. “I could do with a hotel three times as big,” said Barbara Kimmig of the three-star Villa Rivoli in Nice. Over in Languedoc, Dubliner Karl O’Hanlon – of Domaines et Demeures, which runs three wine château hotels – said: “Bookings are fantastic.”
The absence of big-spending Russians – in normal times worth millions to the local economy – has been compensated by Scandinavians, Germans, Dutch, British, Brazilians, and North Americans profiting from the re-establishment of up to three direct flights a day from New York to Nice.
“As I walk around Nice, I see the beaches, restaurants and bar terraces – and there’s only one word for the atmosphere: festive,” said Mme Kimmig.
