- Municipality of Hersonissos invites tourism professionals, businesses, employees, and associations to complete the anonymous questionnaire “Hersonissos 2030 – 45 Questions About Our Place”.
- Nine thematic sections gather insider knowledge on visitor profiles, habits, and spending behaviour.
- Follows digital image analysis and two public consultations; all data will feed into a full SWOT assessment.
- The bottom-up co-creation approach aims to shape the destination’s future identity through local expertise and collective responsibility.
- Mayor Zacharias Doxastakis calls for active participation to build a strategy grounded in reality, not assumptions.
The Municipality of Hersonissos is quietly pushing forward one of the most structured place-branding exercises currently underway on Crete. Instead of hiring an outside agency to dream up a glossy new slogan, the local authority is doing something rarer: asking the people who actually run the destination every day to help define its future. The latest step is an online questionnaire aimed squarely at tourism professionals, business owners, staff, associations, and their members.
Titled “Hersonissos 2030 – 45 Questions About Our Place”, the survey is deliberately anonymous and divided into nine thematic blocks. It probes everything from visitors’ current profiles and origins to their habits, preferences, and spending patterns. The goal is straightforward: capture the sharp, street-level understanding that only those working on the ground possess.
Three Phases, One Clear Direction
This questionnaire marks the third phase of a broader analytical process grounded in modern international place-branding methodology. Phase one involved extensive digital listening — scraping and analysing comments, reviews, and conversations on major tourism platforms and social media to map how visitors actually perceive Hersonissos today.
Phase two brought locals into the room. Two public consultations gathered mayors, professionals, associations, clubs, and ordinary residents. Participation was strong and the insights, according to organisers, proved genuinely useful.
Now phase three turns the spotlight on the industry itself. By combining the digital data, the consultation outcomes, and the fresh responses from this survey, the municipality will produce a clear, evidence-based snapshot of the destination’s current position. From there, it will extract a classic SWOT matrix: strengths to capitalise on, weaknesses to fix, opportunities to seize, and threats that could derail progress.
The entire exercise rests on two simple but powerful principles — co-creation and bottom-up planning. Rather than imposing a top-down vision, the municipality wants the future strategy to emerge from the people who live with the consequences of every decision. Transparency and accountability to the local community and tourism sector are baked in from the start.
Why This Matters on the Ground
Hersonissos, like many Cretan coastal destinations, sits at a crossroads. Mass tourism brought growth, but it also put pressure on infrastructure, the environment, and the very character of the place. A strategy built solely on outsider opinions or outdated statistics would miss the nuances that matter most: which visitor segments are changing, where businesses’ real pain points lie, and what locals genuinely value and want to protect.
By giving professionals a structured voice, the process increases the likelihood that the final 2030 plan will be practical rather than theoretical. It also sends a quiet signal that the municipality is listening before it speaks.
Mayor’s Direct Call to Action
Mayor Zacharias Doxastakis put it plainly: “Hersonissos is changing, and this change must be based on knowledge, participation, and collective responsibility.” He added that the destination’s strategic identity should be shaped by the very people who live and work here — those who best understand its real dynamics and needs.
Completing the questionnaire, he stressed, is critical because it allows the municipality to chart a course that reflects reality and the true potential of Hersonissos up to 2030. He urged every tourism business, professional, employee, and stakeholder to take part and share the link with their networks.
The questionnaire is available via https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSfW1WghPLcPfw…/viewform
Practical advice for those invited to respond: set aside twenty to thirty minutes when you can concentrate. The more honest and detailed the answers, the more useful the final strategy will be. Anonymity means you can speak freely about both successes and frustrations. If you run a business or lead an association, consider forwarding the link to your teams and members — the broader the participation, the stronger the final picture.
This is not another box-ticking exercise. It is a deliberate attempt to move from reactive tourism management to a more thoughtful, long-term approach. Whether the result delivers meaningful change will depend on how seriously the industry treats this opportunity. For now, the invitation is open, the process is transparent, and the deadline — though not specified in the announcement — is clearly now.
Hersonissos is asking its own people to help write the next chapter. The only thing left is for them to pick up the pen.