The company that brought hundreds of thousands of budget-seeking tourists to stampede Crete Island is all set to “train” the next generation of hospitality slavedrivers. At least this is one way of considering an initiative dubiously dubbed “TUI FutureShapers Greece.” Given the current situation, the almost complete takeover of Greece’s and other nations’ hotel industries seems imminent. What TUI and others are enacting, what Germany and other powerful EU nations are engaging in, should be met in the same way Mussolini’s demands were in 1940 – “Oxi!”
Yes, the TUI Care Foundation, a charity of the German tours giant, is now a non-profit Wise Greece to launch a free, innovative educational program for entrepreneurs and businesses. Just when an INSETE study reports that more than 60,000 tourism jobs remain vacant, the company dead set on “Germanizing” Greece steps in with a re-education program.
At the moment, tens of thousands are striking over better wages, working conditions, and pensions, caring TUI, the company that is the biggest cause of whittled-down earnings and wages ramps up. I cannot wait to see the “specialists” TUI airdrops on Crete to indoctrinate Greeks.
When I read the press at GTP, I could not contain a gasp of pitiful laughter at the audacity of TUI and the corporate world in general. Hospitality workers, educators, metal workers, and the supporting tourism cast running ferries are all sick unto death of Athens’ austerity and of the widening gap between the ultra-rich and everybody else in Greece. As for TUI, how any Greek could stomach working for them is a mystery I will never solve.
As my friends close their shops in Heraklion because cruise and other budget tourists just don’t spend, I am sure the top TUI executives are already at the bargaining table with hoteliers to chop prices even further. The coming electricity distribution workers’ strike on 1–2 November, followed by construction workers on 6 November, should be a wake-up call to Greek (and German) decision-makers that they’ve already squeezed the public too hard.
TUI Youth Indoctrination?
For those who think I am being too harsh on TUI and the Greek oligarchs, pay attention to what Greece’s Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis told contemporaries on the sidelines of International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings back in October that “any accommodation for wage increases must not put at risk the downward trajectory of the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio.”
Excuse me, but did Hitler’s paratroopers ever leave Crete? The new Operation Mercury and the Greek collaborators have already conquered our island. With TUI and other operators pulling at businesses and workers at one end, the financiers in Germany, Luxembourg, and the IMF are draining their blood out of the country at the other. Like all other plans put in action here in Greece, there is a severe lack of operational recipes that can only be attributed to stupidity, lack of long-range planning, and piracy by various entities, all of the above. Athens has boosted golden visa plans for the monied who can afford to scarf up Greek properties while at the same time working with TUI and others to drive ten million Greeks off. At least, this is how it seems to be playing out. Further exacerbating the problem is the overall degradation of Crete as a tourism destination (and a place to live).
This study from the Macrothink Institute in 2020 made several alarming conclusions. Below is one that TUI and the Greek tourism authorities have ignored completely.
Crete is an insular tourist destination with many coastal tourism spots, and therefore it is vulnerable to over-tourism. Its impacts on the fragile natural ecosystems could be catastrophic. Additionally, excess tourism has undesired social consequences to local residents. Tackling excess tourism and moving towards responsible tourism requires smooth cooperation among all stakeholders of the tourism industry in order to promote the appropriate policies for that.
Smooth operation by corporate tourism definitions means grabbing as many hotels into the flock as possible and then squeezing the life out of them and their staff. TUI is like the Walmart of travel. Look at what Walmart did to small businesses in America! Perhaps it’s meaningful to know that Vanguard in the US owns about 13 million shares of TUI stocks. Ironically, sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexei Mordaschow has owned as much as 34% of TUI shares. I won’t delve into the company’s Nazi past, its alleged help in building chemical weapons stockpiles in Libya and Iraq, and other nefarious “caring about profit” deeds no matter what.
Unlearned Lessons
TUI and the others have learned nothing from recent hotel workers’ strikes in the United States. And 1,100 people suing TUI over getting deathly ill from E. coli on trips to Cave Verde have made no dent in the knuckleheads at the company’s headquarters. Those people were on supposed 5-star getaways with the world’s most enormous tourism monster—a final note on TUI.
How does this title from Travel and Tour World strike you? “TUI Futureshapers Powerfully Empowers Global Tourism Businesses With Revolutionary Capital And Expert Mentorship?” TUI’s bigger vision seems to either take over every beach hotel on Earth or put as many as possible in debt to the company and its stockholders. Tell me I am wrong, please.
Returning to the original TUI story at GTP, it’s sad to see TUI’s public relations people gloss over Greece’s biggest problem, which the company has primarily caused. Underneath a photo of the Chairman of the TUI Care Foundation, Thomas Ellerbeck, Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni, Wise Greece Founder Melina Tapratzi, and Greek National Tourism Organization President Angela Gerekou, you’ll find this passage:
Based on the foundation’s figures, in Greece, despite the potential for entrepreneurial innovation in the food and tourism sectors, approximately 30 percent of young people are unemployed.
The geniuses at TUI and Greece’s governmental policy sleuths fail to mention that almost 60 per cent of all hotel workers never graduated high school. I wonder if IMF-imposed austerity measures and the notorious Greek cleptocracy could have a negative impact there! Hmm. It’s almost as if TUI and all the others want and need unskilled and desperate workers. But somehow, the taskmasters way up yonder in corporate headquarters have not learned when enough is enough. I could go on for weeks here, but the reader understands.
Oxi! Response Agenda
I looked at data from several sources to find out exactly where the potential lies for Greek hospitality workers. Using this data, I found that workers in places like Argentina stand to see salaries increase by 659 % over 5 years. From a different perspective, labor costs in Greece are only about 15% of total costs, while in places like Germany, the same costs are over 41% (Eurostat). Interestingly, comparing the projected 5-year salary growth for hotel workers in Argentina to the 5% increase in Heraklion, Crete, hospitality workers finally eeked out the other day; the Greeks are destined for the poor house or street sweeper jobs in Germany.
What is most troubling is not Greece’s current situation; it’s where the country is headed. The average Canadian hotel worker makes about double what a Greek worker does. Bulgaria is a closer comparison, where over the past five years, the average hotel worker’s salary has increased by over 50%. Greeks can take solace from TUI by doing the same thing in Turkey, Egypt, and most other destinations. All this amounts to redux domination of smaller entities by those with more resources and leverage. This current situation in places like Crete amounts to a paratrooper drop consisting of bean counters instead of Fallschirmjäger. Corporate negotiations to gain more should be met with a resounding Oxi (no).
[…] restoration of balance in pricing policies. The president of the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels (XEE), Alexandros Vassilikos revealed that it is planned to file collective lawsuits in cooperation with European sector […]