The beating to death of an Australian tourist on Mykonos has woken Greeks up to the question of how the rest of the world perceives this country. It is a periodic awakening, usually following senseless deaths of tourists.

Last year two French tourists drowned in the bowels of the cruise ship Sea Diamond, run aground by its captain off Santorini. In 2006 two British siblings died tragically of carbon monoxide poisoning when the boiler of their rented bungalow on Corfu malfunctioned. In 2003 a young Briton was slashed to death with a broken bottle in the Rhodes resort of Faliraki following a night of binge drinking. Such stories are inevitably going to generate headlines in countries whose nationals suffer.

Sometimes the tourism-related stories are objectively important. In the biggest such story in recent years, 121 passengers and crew were killed in 2005 when a Cypriot Boeing 737 failed to compress at high altitude and plunged into eastern Attica. And Greece made international headlines in 2000 when 85 people drowned on board the Express Samina in the country’s second-worst maritime disaster.

Travel and tourism-related stories, along with natural disasters such as last year’s forest fires, also happen to be the biggest international headlines Greece has generated since the 2004 Olympics. This is both good and bad. As one veteran foreign correspondent points out (see article on page 5), it is a sign of how economic and political progress have moved Greece on from the upheavals of civil war, reconstruction and dictatorship between the 1940s and the 1970s; but it is also a signal that Greece is politically and economically trivial – a resort country the rest of the world remembers when the second home market heats up.

The trivialisation of Greece is not all its own doing. The country is partly a victim of the trivialisation of world news. As print media and even television begin to go into the red, news-gathering budgets are being slashed. The only news bureaus in Athens are run by the workhorses of the industry – the wire agencies – which act as a press pool for their clients. Besides them, few news organisations here offer salaried positions. Even active freelancers are few, and a press ministry demand that their dispatches be their chief source of income is a bit of a joke.

The dearth of news-gathering cash is leading to travesties; wire agencies now see their stories cannibalised by would-be correspondents, or sometimes stolen wholesale by desk editors in London and New York who can’t afford to field a journalist (or can’t be bothered to).

Greece is also partly a victim of each country’s natural introspection. With so many foreign nationals visiting (they were the majority of 16 million arrivals last year), any deaths during the news-starved summer months will cause disproportional headlines back home and displace other, perhaps more important, stories.

But if Greece cares about its image globally – and all the indications are that it does – it only seems to remember half the time. Television talkfests buzz with concern over the fallout on tourism and national pride every time a foreign medium criticises Greece; but when the furore is forgotten, it does not seem to occur to anyone that the country’s self-determination is its biggest story.

In the postwar stories, the political and social revolution that was the coming to power of Pasok in 1981, in being the eurozone straggler in 2001 and the country with the lowest expectations to hold the Olympics for some time, Greece was seen as striving for something. Our spectacular foreign policy turnaround in 1999 took Turkey by surprise and we leveraged the European Union effectively enough to nearly solve the division of Cyprus in 2004.

Increasingly, though, Greece seems to be getting bogged down in complacency and an inability to pass economic and social reforms. Either they are not passed to the extent that they are necessary (each administration seeming to be in conversation with the next) or not addressed at all. That is the case in the environment and the perception of corruption and lack of transparency, meritocracy and accountability in the public sector.

When a country seems to be at a stalemate with itself the media tend to lose interest. When it seems to be on the cusp of change the microphones come closer. Without a slew of reforms Greece will only be subject to the stories it cannot generate or suppress – human tragedy and natural disaster. It will be in terms of the media and real terms in the hands of fate.

One foreign correspondent speaking to this newspaper put it best: “There’s no sense of the country having any specific task to complete.”

[Via]

Greece is the ‘guest country’ of the Q2 2007 NBI: it was chosen because it has long been conspicuous by its absence – it is one of the few longer-standing members of the European Union and one of the few major tourism destinations not to have been included in the NBI.

Greece, of course, also has the Olympics in its bloodstream. Not only was it the birthplace of the Games, but Athens was host to the last Summer Olympics in 2004. In a relatively small country such as Greece, we would expect a successful Olympics to lead to more positive perceptions of the country as a whole, and not just the host city. There are indications that this happened in Spain and Australia after the Barcelona and Sydney Olympics.

Greece was ranked 17th in the Q2 2007 Anholt Nation Brands Index, just behind Ireland and in front of Belgium. As this was Greece’s first time in the survey, we cannot tell whether its brand is improving or not, and if it is, whether this is likely to have been influenced by the Athens Olympics. Nevertheless, the results in the latest NBI survey provide a comprehensive picture of Greece’s brand as a nation and some pointers to what may be influencing it.

Greece’s dominant brand dimension is tourism. The survey placed it only just behind Italy at the head of the tourism league, with strength in all three areas that make up the dimension. Its people were ranked 6th for the welcome visitors expected to receive.

Greece was the leading European nation for heritage, both built and cultural. Heritage boosted its score in the culture dimension where it was 10th, but it was also seen to have strength in contemporary culture for which it was ranked 8th.

Apart from these areas, Greece languishes in the middle and lower reaches of the brand tables. Considering its identification with sport during the 2004 Olympics, and its victory in the European Soccer Championships in the same year, its 20th position for sporting excellence is a poor result. This suggests that Greece has failed to consolidate and build on its reputation as a successful modern sporting nation. Greece’s exports come in at 26th out of 38. In governance, it is the lowest-ranked member of the pre-2003 EU, coming in at 19th place.

Greece’s strength is in tourism, but that contrasts with other areas, particularly Immigration/Investment and Governance. Greece is not at present a country many people would be attracted to live or study in, and its government has less credibility than most of its fellow EU members.

Greece may take comfort from the fact that it is doing better than Portugal in brand terms. Portugal joined the EU five years after Greece, and has also not managed to convince the world that its economy and governance are near the level of most members of the Union. What is more, its tourism sector, according to our survey, is built on weaker foundations than Greece’s.

On the other hand, Spain, which joined the EU at the same time as Portugal, has built a more robust brand, stronger than or equal to Greece and Portugal in all six dimensions. Spain is a bigger country, which usually helps in brand building. It also hosted a successful Summer Olympics in Barcelona in 1992 and continued to build on that success.

Turkey’s image of Greece

Of course, not every nation has the same view of Greece. The most positive perceptions about Greece came from the Americas, where Mexico ranked Greece 13th. Brazil, Argentina, Canada and the USA also placed it above average. However, what is most remarkable about the range of positions Greece was given by our panels is how narrow it was compared with most countries. Only eight places separated 90% of its rankings.

The major exception was Turkey. The world’s view of Greece is summed up in the chart up, while that of Turkey is shown in the graph with a moustache-like shape. Turkish panel respondents acknowledged Greece’s strengths in tourism and culture, but not to do so would to some extent undermine their own. Aside from these dimensions, however, the Turkish panel were extremely ungenerous in their responses. Overall, they placed Greece at 27th. It seems that intra-regional public diplomacy in the Eastern Mediterranean still has some work to do.

Greece ranked 5th for overall country branding according to the second annual Country Brand Index 2006 (CBI). The Index was released in London at the World Trade Market, an annual exhibition held for the global travel trade. This is the official release text:

The CBI identifies countries as “brands” and emerging global travel trends in terms of foreign exchange earnings and job creation. The world’s fastest economic sector pertaining to country branding is travel and tourism and accounts for more than 1 of every 11 jobs worldwide.Greece ranked very high in a number of categories, reflecting the country’s exquisite historical and natural resources, wide variety of holiday options, and the all important “enjoyment” factor. The categories in which Greece excelled are:

• Value for Money
• History
• Art and Culture
• Resort/Lodging Options
• Rest/Relaxation
• Beach
• Natural Beauty
• Nightlife

The summation quote by the branding experts is “Greece: Friendly people with great surroundings and great food.”The international study of country branding was developed by FutureBrand, a leading global brand consulting firm in co-operation with Weber Shandwick’s Global Travel Practice, a public relations firm. It focused on more than 1,500 international travelers, recruited from a globally diverse sample including the Americas, Europe, Asia, South America and the Middle East and screened to include only frequent international travelers who travel internationally more than once a year- between the ages of 21 and 65, with a balanced split between men and women. Business and leisure travelers were both included, as well as travel industry experts and hospitality professionals. The study examined how nations can be branded and ranked according to key criteria, such as emerging trends, travel motivations, challenges and opportunities within the world of travel and country branding.According to the CBI report, new trends for travel and tourism are emerging and unique criteria are making a big impact on the average traveler who is no longer satisfied with the ordinary. Some of those trends include the emergence of people who write on blogs and countless websites about their own travel experiences.With new trends in the travel industry and an ever expanding travel community, come new audiences, all with different needs and expectations during their time away from home. They crave the exotic, “feel at home” accommodations, and want to make weddings, anniversaries and reunions an unforgettable and special time when abroad, wherever their destination may be.Other contenders who ranked on this year’s CBI list were Australia (1) and the United States (2) and Italy (3). In addition to the top 10 rankings, the top three “rising star” countries that are likely to be major tourism destinations in the next five years are China, Croatia, and the United Arab Emirates.For a complete list of country ranks and a look at the Country Brand Index 2006, visit: www.webershandwick.com