- Minister of Tourism Olga Kefalogianni points to health and wellness as growth engines.
- New Ophthalmica facilities in Thessaloniki showcase Greece’s role in global eye care.
- International partnerships promise revenue beyond the summer season.
A New Prescription for Tourism
Forget beaches for a moment. Greece now wants to be remembered for hospitals, not just harbors. At the inauguration of the Ophthalmica Institute’s new buildings in Thessaloniki, Tourism Minister Olga Kefalogianni argued that medical tourism could be the tonic the country’s tourism model needs.
“Medical tourism finds excellent prospects for growth in Greece,” she said. That may sound like policy boilerplate, but there is substance: international travelers are increasingly combining vacations with health and wellness, or picking destinations purely for surgery and recovery. If sun-and-sea tourism has its limits, Greece is looking to check-ups and cataract surgeries to fill the off-season gaps.
Where Health Meets Hospitality
Thessaloniki’s Ophthalmica, in partnership with the Sanoptis Group and Moorfields Eye Hospital of London, is not just another clinic. It represents the kind of infrastructure that makes medical tourism credible and reliable. The Minister called ophthalmology a sector of “high demand,” and she is right: the global appetite for specialized eye care is rising, and Greece has the surgeons to meet it.
With conferences, collaborations, and sterile white corridors, Thessaloniki aspires to compete with Vienna or Istanbul. The broader point is clear: if Greece wants a twelve-month tourism economy, scalpels and microscopes may matter as much as sunsets and beaches.
Beyond the White Tower
For Thessaloniki, the stakes are bigger than patient rosters. A strong medical tourism brand could position the city as a regional hub, drawing visitors for reasons more serious than nightlife. And for Greece, every foreign patient on an operating table is also a hotel guest, a restaurant diner, and a conference delegate.
In the Minister’s words: “With cutting-edge infrastructure, international partnerships, and synergies between health and tourism, we can create new prospects for the national economy and Greek society.”
The challenge now is whether the country can stitch the medical and the touristic into a single seamless fabric—so that Greece is not just where you swim, but also where you heal.