One of the biggest tourist events to promote German tourist travel to Greece, organised on an annual basis by the FVW professional tourist magazine at different tourist destinations every time, will be concluded in Rhodes on Tuesday with the cooperation of the Greek National Tourism Organisation (EOT), the Southern Aegean region and Protour (Organisation for the promotion of Rhodes Tourism).

FVW is part of a German-based media group specialising in tourism and business travel.

Greece was in the front line this year, and particularly Rhodes, where the FVW Rhodos Workshop is being held as of June 19 with the participation of about 50 representatives of travel offices from Germany as well as agencies and businessmen of the Southern Aegean tourist sector.

The sessions on the theme of “The extension of the tourism period and the improvement of tourist arrivals and revenues from the market of Germany” were opened on Monday by EOT Secretary General Panos Livadas, representing Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni.

Livadas stressed in his address the importance placed by Greece on the German tourist market, saying that “2013 was the year of the return of German tourists. Travel revenues amounted to 1 billion 900 million euros, an increase of 14.9 percent, while arrivals neared 2.3 million (up 7.5%). Germany constituted 12.7% of the market share. The initial assessments are that 2014 will end with a 10% increase” of tourists from Germany.

In Rhodes in particular, he said, 2013 ended with a 9.61% rise in arrivals from Germany (216,399), while in the first five months of 2014 arrivals increased by 32.74%.

He also said that the portal visitgreece.gr was undergoing a big-scale updating, using EU funding, that would also introduce the German language as one of the user options.