Tourism Development in North Greece

Tourism now considered being as one of the world’s largest industries and maybe one of the fastest growing economic sectors. As for many other countries and for Greece, tourism supposed as a main instrument for regional development. Furthermore depression in Greece has become a subject of global interesting in scientific community. In such an adverse macroeconomic environment, tourism’s contribution to Greek economy is a matter of great importance. In this context, Greek state participating in the Operational Program for Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation 2014–2020 (EPAnEK), that focuses on balanced regional development and taking into account the particular needs of each of its thirteen Greek regions, announced on the 11th of February 2016, the application of the program “Strengthening SME Tourism” aiming in the modernization and improving of touristic services. The main scope of the current paper is to examine the potential of EPAnEK programs on Region of Central Macedonia, taking under consideration the significant intraregional disparities on tourist development in the region. The first theoretical part of this paper consists of an approach of analyzing all the aforementioned above. The empirical research was conducted in October 2018. All the touristic enterprises in Central Macedonia Region (184), which were selected to receive subsidies from EPAnEK, participated in the research. The statistical methodology that has been used is the calculation of the main descriptive statistical measures, such as the average, standard deviation, coefficient of variation, and the correlation coefficient. According to the main results of the research, new enterprises are not willing to invest in the less developed areas and consequently regional disparities will not be reduced under the influence of application of the EPAnEK. Finally, it should be pointed out that the results of the empirical part of the research in general are relevant to the known literature.