'Jam-packed': mayor of Santorini warns of overtourism crisis amid building boom

Santorini, the island so instagrammable it has become Greece's most popular destination, will not be able to "save itself" if runaway development the most tangible effect of overtourism - is not instantly curbed, its mayor has warned.

- Helena Smith

With more than 3.4 million tourists on course to visit the Cycladic hotspot this year, its chief elected official, Nikos Zorzos, has sounded the alarm, calling for urgent action to stop a construction spree at risk of spurring the isle's ruination.

"We live in a place of barely 25,000 souls and we don't need any more hotels or any more rented rooms," he told the Guardian. "If you destroy the landscape, one as rich as ours, you destroy the very reason people come here in the first place." The building boom is directly related to the record numbers visiting an island that pre-pandemic had already reached "saturation point" according to Zorzos, among the first local government officials in Greece to warn of the perils of overtourism.

Famous for its unique natural beauty, Santorini has 80,000 hotel beds, more per square metre than any other Greek tourist destination after Kos and Rhodes. About a fifth of the southern Aegean island has already been concreted over.

But to the consternation of ecologists, authorities in Athens approved more building permits between 2018 and 2022, enabling construction on an additional 449,579 square metres of terrain.