August 2nd - Plans announced for returning to Rhodes
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 2 August 2023
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Holidaymakers whose trips to Rhodes were cut short by wildfires have been offered a week’s free stay on the island by the Greek prime minister. After wildfires ravaged up to 15 percent of Rhodes, Kyriakos Mitsotakis told ITV Good Morning Britain: “The island is perfectly back to normal.”
Around 20,000 tourists were evacuated from resorts in the southeast of the island when wildfires spread on 22 July.
Many overseas visitors were placed in emergency shelters set up in schools and other public buildings, and flown back early in an airlift.
Anyone whose holiday ended early is, according to the prime minister, entitled to a free week.
It is not clear how the offer will work, with key questions unanswered. I have had a stab at answering them with my colleague, Charlotte Hindle.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. |
| 0:10.8 | It's already the 2nd of August. |
| 0:13.8 | And what an exciting morning it has been, at least for viewers of Good Morning Britain. |
| 0:19.6 | They watched the Greek Prime Minister sit and address the British public, |
| 0:25.2 | which I thought was pretty impressive. |
| 0:27.5 | This is Kiriakos Mitsotakis. |
| 0:30.2 | And he said the island of Rhodes, which of course has been devastated by wildfires, |
| 0:35.8 | is now back to normal. Well, he is now back to normal. |
| 0:38.8 | Well, he said perfectly back to normal indeed. |
| 0:42.2 | That follows 20,000 tourists being evacuated from resorts in the southeast of the island |
| 0:48.2 | when the wildfires started spreading on the 22nd of July. |
| 0:53.4 | And of course, many people were evacuated fairly |
| 0:56.8 | chaotically from their hotels and they were taken to a crisis centres slept on the floors of |
| 1:04.2 | schools etc but now mr mitzutakis says we're going to offer one week of free holidays on roads next spring and next fall, |
| 1:14.6 | which we call autumn, so that we can make sure that they come back to the island and enjoy its natural beauty. |
| 1:21.0 | But it's not clear how it would work, and I'm delighted to be joined by my colleague Charlotte Hindle, |
| 1:26.7 | who's going to pose some questions which I will attempt to answer. |
| 1:31.0 | Hello, Charlotte. |
| 1:31.9 | Hello. |
| 1:32.9 | Well, this sounds really great, but I actually really, really don't understand how this is going to work. |
| 1:38.1 | So is this a scheme that the Greek government is going to be administering, or is this a scheme that they're going to do through |
| 1:46.2 | the tour operators? Well, exactly. I've contacted Tuwi and Jet 2, the two biggest tour operators. |
... |
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