No country has ever grown rich on tourism.
Tourism and economic development — Thasos and Eastern Macedonia–Thrace
Lambros Sakellariou, August 2026
The line belongs to the analyst Marko Jukic, and it irritates — because it is largely correct. For Croatia to reach Switzerland’s GDP per capita, it would need 1.93 billion overnight stays a year. In 2024 it recorded 85 million. That is not difficult. It is impossible.
I have tried to analyse the subject from the perspective of Eastern Macedonia–Thrace, and of Thasos in particular. The links below lead to that analysis in German and English. The question for us here on Thasos is not theoretical. It is very concrete: what does this mean for an island of 13,000 inhabitants that multiplies its population every August?
On Thasos a model has been operating for years that few people call by its name. Visitors from the Balkans buy houses on the island and rent them to compatriots — through agencies and networks in their country of origin. Payment is made in Sofia, Bucharest, Belgrade. What stays on Thasos is the waste, the cesspits, the water that runs out and the roads that cannot cope.
And here is the point public debate usually misses: this is not a legal loophole. Income from a Greek property is taxed in Greece — every double taxation treaty says so. It is an enforcement gap. Which is to say, a choice.
In the attached analysis I examine:
▪️ The “Balkan model” of Thasos — and where exactly the value leaks
▪️ The cost that stays on the island: waste, sewage, salinisation of the aquifers
▪️ CO₂ storage at Prinos — the case for, the case against, and the contradictions within the permitting documents themselves
▪️ And above all: what can be done at local level, starting this year
Because the conclusion is not pessimistic, it is practical: we do not need more tourists. We need measurement, fiscal capture and limits with legal force.
Degradation never arrives abruptly. It arrives as slow, accepted, everyday attrition — until even the last Balkan visitor stays away. Fellow islanders … get up out of your chairs!
