- Greece and Algeria met in Athens during the 3rd Greece–Algeria Joint Interministerial Committee (Jan 19–20, 2026).
- A Tourism Cooperation Agreement is expected to be signed on the sidelines.
- Algeria wants Greece as the guest of honour at SITEV 2026 (Algeria’s big travel fair).
- Algeria is pushing coastal, cultural, and desert tourism.
- Greece pitched its familiar trilogy: culture, gastronomy, mountain tourism, digital platforms, and climate resilience.
- The big practical issue: direct air connectivity (because tourism without flights is just poetry).
- Another focus: tourism education know-how exchange.
There are two kinds of international tourism cooperation. The first is the kind where countries exchange real volumes of travelers, real routes, real investment, and measurable results.
The second is the kind where ministers shake hands beautifully, declare a “new era.” Then everyone forgets that without airplanes, tourism cooperation remains a very polite idea.
This week, in Athens, Greece, and Algeria, the conversation moved slightly closer to the first category. Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni met with Algeria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sofiane Chaib during his visit to Greece for the 3rd session of the Greece–Algeria Joint Interministerial Committee, held in Athens on January 19–20, 2026.
Also present: Deputy Tourism Minister Anna Karamanli, and Algeria’s Ambassador to Greece, Zaina Benhabouche — because nothing says “tourism growth” like three officials in a room deciding the future of sunburn.
The Ritual Document of Optimism
On the sidelines of the committee, the two governments are expected to sign a “Cooperation Agreement in the Field of Tourism.”
The announcement calls it a “milestone” — and to be fair, in diplomacy, an agreement is the official permission slip needed before anything practical begins.
It sets the groundwork for a more systematic relationship in tourism. Which is ministry language for: “We will now talk more often, with PowerPoints.”
Algeria’s Invitation: SITEV 2026
Chaib informed Kefalogianni that Algeria’s Minister of Tourism and Handicrafts intends to invite Greece as a guest of honour at SITEV 2026, the country’s International Tourism and Travel Exhibition.
This is not a small symbolic move — it is Algeria saying, quite openly: “We want visibility. We want exchange. We want Europe to take us seriously as a travel destination.”
And Algeria is not wrong to push it. The country has been developing tourism through investment initiatives and is actively promoting key forms such as coastal, cultural, and desert tourism. That last one is significant because desert tourism is not “sun and sea.” It is experience, scale, silence, and landscape — the kind of product that does not need competition with Greek islands. It sits in a different category.
Greece’s Pitch: Culture, Food, Mountains, and Digital Salvation
Kefalogianni presented Greece’s familiar strategic package: diversification, special interest tourism, and outreach to new markets.
Specifically: cultural, gastronomic, and mountain tourism — because if you say “sea and sun” again, you risk sounding like a 1994 brochure.
She also highlighted the “digital transformation” of the tourism ecosystem: platforms, tools, and better data management — aiming for balanced tourism development while addressing modern issues such as climate change and cultural heritage preservation.
Which is all important, but let us be honest: digital transformation cannot compensate for a lack of infrastructure, bad planning, and chaotic peaks of mass tourism. Still, it is the direction every ministry now must say out loud.
The Pain Point: Direct Flights
Then comes the part that actually matters. There was a reference to efforts to establish direct air connections between Greece and Algeria, because that is the one thing that turns polite cooperation into real tourist movement.
Kefalogianni emphasized that air connectivity is essential for increasing travel and investment flows.
Tourism Education
Beyond routes and fairs, Kefalogianni stressed the potential for cooperation through the exchange of know-how in tourism education.
This is the unsexy part of tourism policy — and often the only one with long-term value, because tourism does not improve with slogans, but with training, standards, and professional culture.
If this relationship becomes functional — direct flights, organized travel programmes, structured promotion — Greece gains a new channel into North Africa’s broader travel and investment environment, and Algeria gains access to Greek know-how in tourism packaging, branding, and heritage storytelling.
