Corfu is not a product
When tourism is structured so that most of the value is created elsewhere and the profits are collected by others, the destination risks becoming little more than a backdrop. Corfu must claim its fair share of the wealth that it helps create.
Corfu has always been a destination. In recent years, however, it has increasingly been transformed into a product. The difference is not merely semantic. It is economic—and deeply political.
A destination is a place that welcomes visitors and grows alongside them. A product is something designed, packaged, and sold by others. In the first case, the local community participates in creating the wealth. In the second, it is reduced to providing the setting and the services required to keep an international tourism supply chain running.
Today, an ever-larger share of a trip is purchased before the visitor even arrives on the island. The booking, transportation, accommodation, and even meals have already been paid for. The money flows through international platforms, airlines, tour operators, and large hotel companies. Corfu hosts the visitor, yet it does not receive a proportionate share of the value it creates—or, more accurately, of the value generated in its name.
This is not an indictment of entrepreneurship, nor a rejection of investment. Investment is essential. But every major investment should answer one simple question: what is the benefit for the local community? How many local businesses are integrated into the supply chain? How many producers are able to sell their products? How many jobs are created that offer long-term prospects and decent wages? And how much of the wealth generated actually remains within Corfu's economy?
That is the discussion that is missing. Instead of measuring only arrivals, overnight stays, and occupancy rates, we also need to measure tourism's economic impact on the very community that hosts it.
Corfu does not need more impressive figures in statistical reports. It needs a greater share of the value it creates. Because a place that is content to offer its sea, its landscapes, and its history without negotiating its share of the wealth they generate risks becoming something far less than a destination: an exceptionally beautiful product, owned by others and benefiting others.
GIORGOS KATSAITIS
