PEYFA against free admittance to ancient sites in Greece

Here in The Netherlands, if you want to do anything tourist-y, you'll have to pay through your nose to do it. It's what keeps our museums funded, our outdoor sites clean, and our natural locations tidy. Governments don't have to spend too much, and besides me on a lazy Sunday, as well as 14 million tourists, everyone is happy.

Athens, recently, has been making moves to stimulate tourism to the ancient sites, and one of these moves is to offer entrance to the ancient sites for free. There have been free guided tours, free entrance on special days, combination tickets, and many other initiatives to bring in the hordes. The decision, guides at these sites say, would cut the already limited budgets of these sites even more.

In a small article by Protothema, the issues are addressed, specifically the initiative to offer free entrance to archaeological sites at least one Sunday per month. It was criticized by the Panhellenic Union of Employees for the Guarding of Antiquities (PEYFA). PEYFA claims that such a move would reduce revenue, especially due to the high season.

The group believes that travel agents would organize free visits by groups and cruises on the one free Sunday during high season and several Sundays during winter. This way they would avoid paying entry fees and cost the cultural organizations funds that are urgently required.

"This is exactly what occurred over many years in the past and, because the state lost vast sums, this was abolished with our own intervention."

It's not a secret that Greece is struggling to fund it's archaeological sites, museums, and other cultural inheritance locations. Heck, Greece is struggling to fund anything these days. While tourism needs to be stimulated, tourism at its core serves as a way to fund the day-to-day and the restoration of the very sites that attract it. It's a discussion that I think will remain for a long time to come, and may weigh heavily on the future of the sites and modern safeguards of the items that were once stored at them. Sites that we consider sacred.