I noticed in German news this morning....an odd campaign erupted out of Greece in the last couple of days....."boycott Germany".
Yeah, so the angle on this is that Greeks are furious at the way the Germans manipulated the deal for the loan money. They insist that they will not buy German (Porsche, Adidas tennis shoes, Audi, Siemens, etc). It's mostly what I'd call a Twitter campaign and one has to have doubts that it's captured the enthusiasm of that many Greeks.
From my walks around Athens six weeks ago.....I'd say less than forty-percent of the adult population is 'hooked-up' with smart-phone or computer technology. You have to remember....up until 2013....Greeks insisted that computers were awful stressful and if you were a gov't employee.....you needed another six days of vacation a year.
How this 'boycott Germany' deal will come across in Germany itself? Here's the curious thing. More or less.....2.5 million Germans do a vacation in Greece yearly. With a population in Greece of eleven million people.....having 2.5 million Germans fly in and spend a week or two...is a big deal. While some Germans might stay at a 2-star hotel....eating cheaply, and mostly just laying at local beaches....I'd say the bulk (well over 75-percent) stay at nicer resorts/hotels and spend at least 1,500 Euro on their vacation (a family of four).
These are the people that buy t-shirts from some local peddler on the street. These are the people that eat ice cream each afternoon. These are the people who spend three or four evenings during the trip at some cafe and sip Greek wine. These are the people who will sit down and have a fabulous dinner at a nifty Greek cafe. These are the people who pay six Euro for a trip into the 'Cave of Zeus', then turn around and get a t-shirt noting they've been to the 'Cave of Zeus'. These are the people who rent a car for seven days while in Greece. These are the people who buy fake Chinese-made statues from the Greece gift shops while in Greece. And these are the people who pay tour-bus operators forty Euro per person for an afternoon drive of the Greek countryside or ninety-Euro per person for a four-hour boat trip to see some Greek dolphins while in the 37-degree C heat.
The question is....why would I piss off a bunch (2.5 million) of Germans?
Just from the prospective of the two Greek airline companies.....there's at least forty flights a day from various German cities during the summer months. There's tons of money being made with 200-odd passengers on each plane. Why would you want to screw around and lose a ton of business?
There's at least five billion Euro lost if you trigger the 2.5 million Germans into skipping on vacation in Greece. They will go elsewhere.
The sad thing here, is that hotels, pubs, and restaurants, along with the bus and airline companies....employed literally tens of thousands of Greeks to make this operation as smooth as possible. When you go up to some public beach and those six ice cream shops sit there on a two-kilometer stretch of beach.....they all employed people to run them. The pub next to the hotel with a nice view of beach? They employed five or six folks to run the bar and ensure a four-star operation.
Somewhere in this threat of a boycott of Germany....I see a fair amount of foolishness....people with no common sense or vision of how the economy of Greece is hinged to public perception. The last thing on Earth that you'd want 2.5 million Germans to do.....is have this really stupid view of an unfriendly place....where it's best to avoid.
I have no idea of the success or direction of this boycott. But as Germans wake up this morning and read their local paper....they will have an idea of the story, and might bring this up with a friend or neighbor. By this weekend.....ninety-percent of Germans will know about the boycott idea. Sadly, I don't think they will take it in a friendly way. And no.....they won't talk of boycotting Greece....they will simply smile and say they've got better places to spend their money. If you ask me.....the Turks might be grinning a bit and know precisely where the alternate deal will be.
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