- Santorini is nearly deserted in 2025, a surprising development even to locals.
- Earthquakes and overtourism backlash keep travelers away.
- Hotels slash prices while rooms stay empty through peak August.
- Mykonos, Rhodes, Corfu, Zakynthos, and Chania report similar chaos and discounts.
- Data shows hotel occupancy stagnation and shrinking profits.
- Visitors call the new “quiet Santorini” both eerie and oddly luxurious.
- Locals struggle with rising costs and an influx of Airbnb rentals.
- Booking last minute? You’ll have your pick—no need to run.
- Cruise arrivals are capped and taxed, but still, nobody’s elbowing for sunset selfies.
Tourist Traps Without Tourists
“Last year, I spent half an hour cooking in the car just inching up from the ferry,” reports Maria, a London-based visitor whose patience usually boils faster than her rental’s dashboard. “This time, I hit the old port and made it to the top in five minutes. I thought I’d landed on the moon.”
Santorini in 2025 belongs to the tumbleweeds. The cause? A cluster of earthquakes earlier in the year managed to scare off the usual crowds, aided by a growing resentment at years of unchecked tourism. The famous bottlenecked road, once a dystopian slow-cooker stuffed with honking scooters and delirious cab drivers, is now an open runway. The only honking comes from confused goats.
The evidence is as clear as the view from the caldera. Where travelers used to jostle at each Instagram hot spot, now visitors are in charge. One Swedish traveler in Oia whispered, “I was ready to fight for my sunset selfie. Instead, I felt like I was trespassing.” Even the blue-domed church—a shrine for camera-toting hopefuls—sits in silence. All those honeymooners who once splashed in the caldera-edge pools? Vanished. The pools glisten quietly, like a well-kept secret that got too boring to tell.
The Numbers: Discounts and Doldrums
Let’s talk numbers, since nothing says “crisis” like a spreadsheet:
- On Mykonos, 468 places are offering guests discounts of up to 50%.
- On quiet Santorini, 680 hotels and rooms still had vacancies in mid-August, a peak season.
- Deals span both middle-of-the-road and top-tier spots, so nobody’s feeling exclusive.
Other islands join the parade of empty beds:
- Rhodes: Over 500 hotels still had rooms during the busiest summer week.
- Corfu: 460 available stays, ice cream not included.
- Zakynthos: Only 213 empty beds, but with generous markdowns for those who arrive.
- Chania: 310 spots left for mid-August stays.
At the root? An avalanche of short-term rentals has eroded whatever balance the old hotel scene once held. Airbnb chokes out local hotels, while old-school hoteliers paper over their windows with last-minute offers. Five-star hotels are buckling. The mass-market all-inclusives, on the other hand, plod along unfazed, cheery as ever. One local manager in Fira confided, “It’s never been this quiet. The staff get lunch breaks.”
Quiet Santorini: Data That Bites Back
- According to the Hellenic Institute for Tourism Research and Forecasts, May 2025 hotel occupancy crept to only 61.9%, up a single point from last year.
- Ninety percent of hotels bothered to open, but room prices dipped: the average double now sells for 112 euros, barely a euro less than last spring.
- The Bank of Greece reports that inbound travel for May 2025 decreased by 2.7% year-over-year, totaling approximately 2.97 million travelers.
- Airport arrivals ticked up by a hair, while land arrivals collapsed by 21.5%—road trippers got the memo.
- In June, the numbers remained muted, and July saw only a slight improvement. August bookings increased, but primarily due to last-minute rushes.
The formula is straightforward:
- High running costs now outstrip any timid rise in guest prices, resulting in collapsing profits.
- Hotel bars and restaurants are often seen as graveyards, with even the most affluent guests adhering to strict budgets.
- Most bookings in 2025 happen at the eleventh hour, fueling a wildfire of flash sales.
Hoteliers keep one eye glued to their two lifelines:
- Occupancy rates
- Average daily room price
Everything else, including sanity, is up for grabs.
Locals and Travelers: Shock, Delight, Despair
Locals collect the silver lining—less trash on the roads, no tourists resting on their window sills, and a rare chance to hear nothing but the wind. “It’s peaceful, which is worrying,” says Kostas, who rents umbrellas on Kamari Beach. “Too peaceful.” Meanwhile, tourists savor the emptiness as if it were an exclusive VIP pass. “I feel guilty even sitting here,” laughs an American honeymooner at an abandoned sunset spot. “We keep waiting for someone to kick us out.”
The cruel punchline? Even with fewer crowds, the cost of keeping hotels open skyrockets, so real profits evaporate. The only ones making money are the local goats, content to bask in the sun on empty terraces.
2025’s Quiet Santorini Crisis in a Nutshell
- Earthquake panic and overtourism backlash crush visitor numbers
- Unprecedented off-season calm during high season
- Hotel availability surges: hundreds of rooms sit unused in August
- Mykonos, Rhodes, Corfu, Zakynthos, and Chania join in, slashing prices up to 50%
- Short-term rentals (Airbnb and similar) disrupt the local hospitality sector
- Five-star hotels endure the harshest squeeze; uneaten canapés abound
- Operating costs outpace any minor rise in room prices, strangling profits
- In-house spending by guests falls, killing off bar and restaurant margins
- Last-minute booking becomes the only game in town
- Occupancy and average daily room rate are now the last metrics standing
- Locals savor the quiet but dread the financial aftermath
- Visitors luxuriate in the emptiness but find it surreal
- New cruise ship caps and taxes seem irrelevant when ships barely bother docking
Santorini has spent decades pulling itself up with boutique hotels and sunset selfies. Now, in 2025, the island discovers the price of popularity: a rare, unsettling quiet, and the unnerving suspicion that sometimes you really can have too much peace and quiet—even on quiet Santorini.
Τουρισμός: Άδεια δωμάτια σε Μύκονο και Σαντορίνη μέσα στον Αύγουστο
