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.
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“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!”
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Canaves isn’t the only Santorini hotel that’s shrugging off the earthquakes’ hangover. Daniel Kerzner, who owns…
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