According to news from the TUI Care Foundation, Thomas Ellerbeck, the movement’s president, and Melina Taprantzi, founder of Wise Greece (Fun, Food, and Social Good), a new breed of Greek tourism specialists will be born. According to TUI, the FutureShapers Greece initiative will provide education, mentoring, and plenty of opportunity for those willing to toe the TUI line. Read on and compare corporate hogwash with reality.
Of course, the TUI Care Foundation, Wise Greece, the Ministry of Tourism of Greece, and the Greek National Tourism Organisation will grimace at my report here, but the waking world is sick and tired of business propaganda disguised as news.
Sustaining TUI Revenue
The news supplies us with key features that are not new to the tourism racket in Greece. But for the sake of fairness, I shall repeat them here. This new “initiative” will be:
- Focused on sustainable development across tourism, hospitality, gastronomy, arts, and crafts. (Sustainable profitability, you mean?)
- Training for 1,000 aspiring entrepreneurs to build and scale their business ideas. (Minions?)
- Includes bootcamp sessions and financial prizes for top ideas. (The Colossus of Prora re-purposed?)
- Support for at least 60 small and medium-sized enterprises, artisans, and producers. (The bait?)
- Training in sales, marketing, and digital skills to boost their offerings. (An ounce of honesty – boosting TUI sales and offerings eh?)
Pardon the crisp rescrambling of what these sock puppet decision makers want you and I to believe, this two-section indoctrination program is all about the Idea (one section) of TUI running everything and everyone in Greek travel. It’s also meant to “Empower” the largest tourism company in the world with even more leverage and more disciples playing at green tourism. So the reader knows, TUI’s sustainability score, despite being the biggest kid on the block, has an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risk of 234 out of 471, or mediocre when compared to many smaller entities. This means that TUI stands a far greater chance of hurting the environment and society than 239 other companies in the same sector. (Marriott, by comparison, is in the top 30 companies for ESG scores).
When these big business instruments speak of sustainability, they are not talking about preserving culture, history, tradition, our planet, or even us little people. They are talking about sustainable revenue and profit growth in the supercapitalism lingo we see sent out to the investor class. Here is what TUI (and friends) describe as the two tracks toward tourism Nirvana.
TUI IDEA Track
This track offers free, comprehensive training to future entrepreneurs across Greece. Participants will learn through expert-led sessions, gaining practical insights to turn concepts into reality. The process culminates in a bootcamp in Athens (ah not Prorer Wiek), where standout ideas will compete for significant financial prizes (only the penitant shall pass) to kickstart their implementation.
TUI POWER Track
Designed for existing businesses, this track supports small and medium-sized enterprises, artisans, and producers in key tourist regions like Zakynthos, the Peloponnese, Corfu, Epirus, the Cyclades, and Rhodes (not CRETE!). Through targeted training, participants can upgrade their products, improve marketing strategies, and enhance digital skills. (And work for the TUI taskmasters?)
Unabashed Audacity
For those of you who think I am just angry at TUI and dreaming this stuff up, read what Thomas Ellerbeck and Greek Wise’s Taprantzi had to say about the new program. It truly is all about “sustainable” growth and nothing else. Ellerbeck (at left above) veiled the promise for adopters saying TUI will “equip participants with the tools and connections needed to face today’s challenges head-on.” But it was Taprantzi (2nd from left above) who highlighted the project’s authentic goal to “promote innovation in sectors vital to Greece’s economy.”
The economy, growth, revenue, and real innovative ideas like regenerative tourism, agriculture, and business are nowhere to be seen. Oh but wait. According to the news this initiative contributes to addressing social and environmental challenges, fostering entrepreneurship tailored to sectors critical for Greece’s growth (TUI), and on indoctrination and skill-building. The joint announcement goes on to explain why FutureShapers Greece matters to hoteliers.
Again, the TUI lingo is wrapped up in green, eco-friendly leaves and expressed as having its focus on sustainable practices and market-ready solutions. The whole boondoggle is supposed to get hotels in Greece to come under the TUI banner. In other words, “Hoteliers seeking to align with forward-thinking practices should watch how this initiative unfolds.”
These TUI FutureShapers agents have no shame. They don’t even really hide the fact that anything TUI or the Greek authorities do is aimed at profiting the very few. The village idiot who ready Kathemireni or GTP Headlines will just think, “Ah, TUI doing more to get us poor Greeks some jobs.” But rest assured, tourism geniuses, the average person on the street knows exactly who you are. You “sustainability” ideas won’t last must longer if the small operators pull the plug. But hey, isn’t that what this is all about?
