- Ierapetra’s hotels reached about 70% occupancy during Easter.
- Locals and tourists flooded cafés and eateries, making patience a survival skill.
- Most restaurants struggled to fill orders as demand spiked after midnight on Good Friday.
- Several cafés broke sales records for coffee on Easter Sunday.
- Restaurant owners faced higher costs and fewer open venues compared to last year.
- Reservations for Good Friday dinner happened up to ten days in advance.
- Hotel bookings for the rest of the season look even stronger, projected above 90% for peak months.
Did Easter in Ierapetra Break Any Records for Crowds?
If a Nobel Prize existed for Most Overbooked Town, Ierapetra would have hauled it home this Easter. Small hotels filled their rooms with a mix of hopeful Greeks and international guests convinced Crete is the only place on earth where spring is legal. The three all-inclusive giants—always quick to capitalize—also joined the fun, registering about 70% occupancy and making even the quieter hoteliers squint from disbelief.
“It went well these days even if we didn’t get that post-pandemic crowd, when people had saved up for longer vacations,” claimed Giorgos Chatzakis, treasurer of the Ierapetra Hotel Association and deputy mayor, sounding only half-surprised that not everyone spends savings on their hotel minibar.
The coming season has no intention of letting up. Bookings for summer months already threaten to climb past 90%—unless some politician manages to invent a new form of international uncertainty by breakfast.
Why Did Cafés and Restaurants in Ierapetra Struggle to Keep Up This Year?
If Dante wrote about Easter in Ierapetra, he’d need another circle of hell—this time for good-humored café staff dodging orders and delays. With the sun shining and no one wishing to eat indoors, locals and tourists stormed the city’s taverns, cafés, and restaurants inside and outside town. Calculating wait times turned into a new Olympic sport.
“From the weekend before Holy Week, traffic grew every day. By Easter Sunday, we broke records for coffee sales as everyone prepared for the feast,” reported Manolis Michelarakis, president of the Café and Restaurant Association. As the crowds swelled, getting a coffee within an hour became a feat worthy of myth. “During peak hours, a cup of coffee could take up to an hour to come out—that’s not laziness, that’s physics.”
The pressure hit a boiling point on Good Friday night after the procession. Eateries took bookings ten days ahead, and people descended en masse after 9:30 p.m., turning mild delays into a kind of dinner-theater performance.
Michelarakis commented, “What made things harder this year is not all the restaurants had opened for summer, while running costs are now unbearable.”
Locals are urged to lower their expectations—or bring snacks.
For more bewilderingly accurate details on Easter in Ierapetra, visit NeaKriti for the full story.
