After the 'freezing' of short-term rentals in the centre of Athens, the discussion about 'freezing' the licenses for new hotels opens.
The possibility of imposing restrictions on the issuance of new permits for hotels in Athens was raised by the mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, at the "This is Athens - Agora" event.
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In the Greek capital, there is already a ban on issuing new permits for short-term rentals in three neighbourhoods of the city centre.
"We really need to see if and how many more hotels we need and where," Doukas said in response to a question from Euronews. "We need to see and think about how much extra tourist load we can lift and where.
"We must not become Barcelona. We have to understand that there are saturated areas that cannot afford new beds: whether short-term rentals or not. Talking at events around the globe, we see that capping is not only being put on short-term rentals but also on hotels; in specific, 'saturated' areas."
According to the latest available data from INSETE, there are 68,934 hotel beds in Attica. Of these, some 35 000 are located in the greater Athens city centre area.
Hotel industry players admit that the number of hotels in the Greek capital has increased dramatically in recent years, which raises sustainability issues for both the industry and the city's tourism.
A ban on issuing new hotel licences is already in place in Barcelona and Amsterdam. The municipality of Athens has launched an Observatory on the impact of tourism on the city.
Hoteliers: 'We don't need to reinvent the wheel'
Speaking at "This is Athens - Agora" event, the President of the Athens - Attica & Argosaronic Hotel Association, Evgenios Vassilikos, stressed the need for a comprehensive planning for the beds available in Athens.
He pointed out that there is a rapid increase not only in short-term rentals and hotels, but also in non-main tourist accommodation (rooms to let and furnished apartments), which from 800 have now become 1,200.
"There are practices abroad which have been implemented," he explained to Euronews. "We don't need to reinvent the wheel. The example I gave is that in Barcelona they have completely banned short-term rentals from 2028 and from 2017 onwards no new hotel licences are being issued. So there are, therefore, abroad these restrictions. We will possibly have to see in Athens what we want in terms of where we want to be in 10 to 15 years. "
Vassilikos cited as an example the Olympic property of the Tae Kwon Do Stadium, which according to government plans will be converted into a convention centre.
"We will definitely need hotel beds there. How many will these be? How many will be five-star, how many four-star, etc. There has to be a specific plan. And of course that drags in all kinds of beds, meaning non-primary tourist accommodation and short-term rentals."
Athens is now the most popular tourist destination in Greece. International arrivals reached 12 million in 2025, with the total number of visitors estimated to be close to 10 million.
