At the World Travel Market international tourism exhibition that take place every year in London, our volunteers had the opportunity to share information on the hiking routes that Andros Routes project takes care of.

Andros Routes, was given the opportunity to support the Andros stand, to share information on our hiking trails, maps- ( Andros Routes’ map at the scale 1/27.000), our festival video and the pan-European booklet  of  Leading Quality Trails with visitors to the stand, many of whom were very interested in the idea of hiking in Greece, and in visiting the islands outside of the normal season.

Andros was represented at the WTM this year by Mrs Eleni Politou, the Andros xxx  for Tourism.  We were delighted to attend the first day of this important event, as representatives of Andros Routes, supporting Mrs Politou, along with other representatives of commercial organisations of Andros. WTM is an important global exhibition for Tourism, attended by national and commercial organisations and businesses as well as consumers and member of the public. Andros was exhibited as part of the Southern Aegean region on their impressive themed stand.

As part of the first day agenda, we were lucky to meet with Mrs Elena Kountoura, the Greek Minister for Tourism, who gave a talk on Greek Tourism and highlighted the successful tourism policy that has been applied in recent times. Among other issues, the minister spoke of an extended season leading to 365-days of tourism for the country, an area where hiking plays a major role. Mrs Kountoura described how Greek tourism numbers have soared by 33 percent over the past four years and gave details on how Greece overcame challenges and achieved tourism growth beyond every expectation.

We also met Victoria Hislop, a world-renowned author of novels, with a home in Greece, who gave a talk on her passion and love of Greece. Victoria shared details of her latest work in progress, which would be set in the Cyclades, and mentioned that she had visited Andros recently and was passionate about the restoration of the “monopatia”. We encouraged Victoria to come again to Andros and hike the trails with us!

As part of the event we also networked with travel companies, travel writers and interested individuals, who were keen to find out more about walking on Andros and we plan to follow up with all of them.

We were pleased to support Andros at this event and hope that we sparked an interest in visiting Andros in the future.

Richard and Jola Gillespie, Andros Routes Volunteers

Τhank you Richard and Jola for your effort and willingness to promote Andros and your positive energy!

The travel and participation expenses of the volunteers -representatives of the World Travel Market were covered by the volunteers themselves.