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Time for teeing off in Greece? By Dimitris Yannopoulos, Athens News business editor A lucrative investment opportunity and a daunting challenge for any country that aspires to the top of the world's holiday destinations, golf also offers Greek tourism a remedy for its endemic ills that inexorably drive it towards stagnation. On the one hand, Greece's eurozone status effectively rules out the use of devaluation as a possible price competition tool against strong rivals in Mediterranean mass-tourism outside the euro-area, such as Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. On the other hand, the country's overdependence on the "cheap" end of the global tourist market is compounded by its extreme "seasonality", with more than 50 percent of the annual tourist influx of 13 million concentrated in the two peak summer months of July and August. "It is inexcusable for a country like ours with an exceptional climate, a rich culture and varied inland scenery to have a tourism period of four or five months," says Tourism Development Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos. "Our goal is for Greece to be a destination all 12 months. We can achieve this by attracting high-income tourists who can afford much more than the sea-sun-sights combination, and we can offer that." Avramopoulos and other senior officials or businessmen in the tourism industry believe that a largely untapped potential for development exists in integrated resort complexes, combining health tourism (thalassotherapy, spas, beauty parlours, rehabilitation facilities), conference centres, marinas, residential tourism (real estate sales or leases, including group retirement schemes), casinos and golf courses.
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