Greece holiday warning: Popular destination to 'cap' number of cruises docking at islands including Santorini and Mykonos to tackle overtourism

The popular holiday destination is planning to reduce the number of cruise ships that can call at islands. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the prime minister of Greece, said: “I think we’ll do it next year”.

The new measures would reduce the number of cruises calling at ports at bougie islands Santorini and Mykonos in a bid to tackle overtourism. Measures include limiting the availability of berths and anchoring slots to alleviate the growing pressure on Greek ports. A bidding process would reportedly be implemented for vessels to secure the slots.

Mr Mitsotakis told Bloomberg: “Santorini is the most sensitive, Mykonos is the second”. Mykonos received nearly 750 cruise ships in 2023 – up 23 per cent from the previous year. Around 800 cruise ships carrying 1.3 million passengers made stops in the Aegean to visit holiday hotspot Santorini last year. 

Mr Mitsotakis said: “There are people spending a lot of money to be on Santorini and they don’t want the island to be swamped. Plus, the island can’t afford it, even in terms of security”. The news comes after Princess Cruises said it will remove some Santorini stops from Sun Princess itineraries in the summer of 2024 due to “cruise ship congestion”.

In 2021, Italy banned cruise ships from the Venice lagoon and last July Amsterdam announced plans to reduce tourist numbers through a limit on cruise ship dockings. Barcelona also jumped on the move by cutting the number of ships able to dock at any one time from 10 to seven in October.