Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-02-12

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] Frontex will work closely with NATO against traffickers, agency chief says

[02] Santorini emerges as one of the world's top tourism destinations

[03] Sklavenitis, Marinopoulos supermarket groups sign partnership agreement‏

[01] Frontex will work closely with NATO against traffickers, agency chief says

"We will work closely with NATO and its members in order to do whatever we can to fight the criminals earning billions of euros from trafficking desperate people from Turkey to Greece," he said, adding that all operations will continue to be carried out with respect for the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Human Rights.

[02] Santorini emerges as one of the world's top tourism destinations

There are currently 75 airlines offering flights to Santorini, with their number rising and flights arriving from dozens of countries, reaching as many as 57 a day during the summer months. Visitors also arrive on cruiseships that dock at Santorini from March until almost Christmas, letting off as many as 25,000 people a day.

According to Thira (Santorini) Mayor Nikolaos Zorzos, the island is very close to achieving the target of all-year tourism. He noted that some 100 hotels remained open throughout the winter of 2015-2016 - representing one eighth of the island's total accommodation capacity - in order to serve visitors in the winter months. He noted that the small size of hotels on Santorini made this feasible, since hotels that stayed open did not have such high running costs as the larger units on other islands.

Zorzos said that Santorini's goals in terms of tourists were not quantitative but how to better coordinate and distribute arrivals, in order to ensure that visitors had the best time possible. He said the Municipal Harbour Funds of Santorini and Mykonos had commissioned a study on "berth allocation" from the University of the Aegean in order to achieve this goal, so that arriving cruise ships only let off as many visitors as the island could handle.

The island was also seeking to develop theme tourism, such as gastrotourism, wine tourism, cultural tourism in its bid to become a year-round destination, with plans to open a new geology museum this year and increase available hiking routes from the current eight to 19, he said. Work on the island with EU funds was continuing, he added, such as a recent project to remove electricity pylons from the view down into the caldera.

[03] Sklavenitis, Marinopoulos supermarket groups sign partnership agreement‏

The new company will operate a network of 33 stores, currently owned by Marinopoulos Group in large urban centers, and will plan a future expansion of the network. These units currently employ more than 3,000 people while their turnover was around 325 million euros in 2015.

The two groups will have an equal share in the new company, with Marinopoulos Group choosing the non-executive chairman of the board and Sklavenitis the chief executive.

The two companies, commenting on the agreement, jointly announced: "Two Greek families with a long presence in the retail commerce sector are joining forces to the benefit of consumers, Greek producers and their employees. We hope that with this new company will positively contribute to support the Greek economy".

Completion of the deal is expected in the next two months after approval by competition authorities.

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