Fewer crowds and quiet hotels – why now is the best time to visit Santorini
Santorini's signature view is as marvellous as ever. From my vantage point at Adami restaurant in the picture-perfect village of Oia, I can see the semicircular sweep of the volcanic crater's cliffs plunging deeply into a midnight-blue sea, with Thirassia islet completing its outline on the other side. Ferries are buzzing in and out of the port beneath Fira, the island's capital, while the massive cruise ships anchored nearby are so far below that they look like bath toys.
It's an everyday Santorini scene, but this year's tourist season is anything but average. Oia, though still bustling, is considerably quieter than usual: a situation that's partly attributed to the earthquakes that shook the island back in February, right in the middle of the peak booking period for sunshine holidays.
'It definitely had an impact,' confides John Bubaris, the general manager of Canaves Ena, the luxurious hotel within which Adami sits. 'The island as a whole has had a very slow start to the season, but now that things have calmed down and bookings are returning.'
Had the earthquakes hit any other Greek island than the one with a world-famous profile, it's unlikely that they would have made headline news. Tremors, after all, are commonplace in Greece thanks to the nation's position near a subduction zone where two tectonic plates collide. Nevertheless, February's period of seismic activity was unusual.
'It wasn't so much the intensity as the frequency that was surprising,' says John, 'with literally hundreds of tremors every day.' And although there were viral videos online of rocks tumbling down the caldera's cliffs, there was barely any damage to the island's infrastructure or architecture. 'The schools were closed and many locals temporarily left, but the situation was never out of control,' continues John. 'Admittedly, it was sometimes scary, but I honestly found it exciting!'
Canaves isn't the only Santorini hotel that's shrugging off the earthquakes' hangover. Daniel Kerzner, who owns Santorini Sky: an all-villa retreat at the centre of the island, close to the hilltop village of Pyrgos, told me: 'The island is fully open again, with zero limitations. Even with the disruption, we've already welcomed guests from nearly 20 countries since January, and we're forecasting 90 per cent occupancy for the year overall.'
Despite this positive outlook, even a casual observer can see that Santorini's tourism has taken a hit. I was there in late May, well before the peak-season rush, and in places Santorini felt eerily quiet. Yes, the port had been hectic when I arrived by ferry, but in Oia there were hardly any people at the spots where queues normally form to take selfies beside the village's famous blue-domed churches.
I walked to Oia one morning along the rugged clifftop footpath from Fira and only encountered a trickle of hikers where usually there'd be a flood. And when I passed through Imerovigli, the highest village on the cliffs, the plunge pools at the many sunset-facing hotels and suites were almost all unoccupied. Even Imerovigli's ubiquitous 'floaty dress' and 'bride-and-groom' photoshoots were in short supply. If you ever wanted to see Santorini without the crowds, this could be the year to do it.
You might want to think about booking soon, though, as the calm won't last for long. Mercury Holidays is one operator for whom Greece bookings are resurging. "We haven't seen any longer-term negative impact on customer demand for Santorini and other Greek islands after the earthquakes,' says the company's marketing manager, Charlie Wakeham. 'Enquiries for Greece are actually higher than last year; and bookings are up, especially for last-minute and summer holidays.'
Even though it sounds like the island is set for a business-as-usual summer, visitors this year can expect a few positive changes. A particular battle is against the reported overtourism that's tarnished Santorini's reputation in recent years. Much of this overcrowding has been attributed to visiting cruise ships, though a €20 per person tax on passengers coming ashore is one of a raft of measures introduced this year to begin resetting the balance.
Elsewhere, there are moves to tackle the perception that Santorini is exclusive and expensive, especially in Oia, where the romance of cave-suite hotels means that some of them can get away with charging the highest rates in all of Greece.
'Several of Oia's fine-dining restaurants have recently switched to offering more traditional Greek cuisine,' says John Bubaris. 'It's in response to consumer behaviour shifts towards simpler, more authentic experiences, but it's also helping to counter the image of Santorini being too pricey.'
It all sounds rather promising for Santorni-bound holidaymakers this summer, I told him. 'Definitely,' John agrees. 'It's great that hoteliers, cruise lines and other stakeholders are coming together collectively to improve the overall guest experience, especially in Oia. That can only be a good thing.'
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