A little more conversation, a little less action please!

Posted by: nr009865 | June 19, 2009

A little more conversation, a little less action please!

Friday 19^th June 2009
Tourism in Loutro and Chora Sfakion

As usual we started the day as we have always done and had our traditional breakfast in our hotel taverna. After we finished our bread and orange juice we went to buy our ferry tickets which was going to take us on the same journey as we had taken yesterday from Chora Sfakion to Loutro.

Ferry

The ferry journey took us very quickly over to Loutro where our aim was to find out about the current and future impacts of human activity, primarily tourism on the village.

When we arrived in Loutro we sat down in the first bar, called “Sifis Hotel” and planned our day over ice cold drinks… bliss!! The owner of this hotel, Christina, was so welcoming and helpful in answering our questions. As a group we interviewed her for quite a while. We asked Christina and other business owners several questions about:

Loutro’s greatest asset
The significance of tourism to the local economy
The quantity of imported food
Trudghill’s representation of Loutro
Plans for further development
Seasonality of tourism
Cultural conflicts

Christina spoke of a new road being built in Loutro which would allow people wider access to the village. However, Christina was not keen on the idea of the road as she felt it would spoil the isolation which the village offers. However, when we asked some tourists their views on the plans to build a road to Loutro they felt it would be selfish not to as it would make access a lot easier for locals. Ultimately, it was established that any type of future development had to be sustainable.

We also questioned tourists about their experiences and perceptions of Loutro. We asked them questions similar to the ones below:

The attraction of Loutro as a holiday destination
Mode of transport to Loutro
The importance of tourism
The consequences of change
Whether they would be willing to support eco-tourism

Sifis Hotel in Loutro

After we stopped for lunch at the Sifis Hotel’s restaurant, we had a browse through the local shops and purchased some souvenirs. We negotiated a price for a taxi boat to take us back to Chora Sfakion where we carried out the same lines of questioning to the tourists and business owners in Chora Sfakion. It soon became apparent that Loutro recieves more long term tourists where as people often just visit Chora Sfakion for a day, usually being the day they catch a ferry to Loutro or Agai Roumeli. We also interviewed the owner of the new Notos Hotel in Chora Sfakion. This new hotel was built to attract younger tourists as it has a swimming pool and rather than being typical hotel rooms they hotel offers suites. There is also another new hotel in Chora Sfakion which is a nudist hotel. This hotel is owned by the same owner of the Hotel we were saying in (hotel Livikion). Again this new nudist hotel aims to attract a wider range of tourists.

Below is a video which shows hundreds of tourists disembarking the last ferry of the day in Chora Sfakion which had carried tourists from Agai Rouemli and Loutro. One day we counted that 663 individuals came off the ferry and yet only one person stopped in Chora Sfakion. Instead the other 662 people boarded coaches which were waiting in Chora Sfkaion to taxi them to the North of Crete.

Overall, we had a very insightful and talkative day!

Please look at our photos on flickr which illustrate the tourist experience in both Loutro and Chora Sfakion. Please click the link below to take you to the first photo in our photo diary.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gg2fcgroup2/3641669578/