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Crisis Pushes Elderly Out of Spas

loutropoliWhile Greece is enjoying a record tourist season, one sector taking a big hit is the cities with therapeutic spas that are frequented mainly by people needing health care benefits and the elderly, many of whom can’t afford to go anymore, statistics have found.
Visits to spas have on a course to fall 70 percent over last year, which was a disappointing season as well. This year’s decline is due to cuts in state insurance allowances for balneotherapy.
A typical example is that of the baths of Aghia Paraskevi at Kassandria Municipality in Chalkidiki. In 2012, an average number of 1,300 baths was recorded on a daily basis, while in 2013 the same number has fallen to 300. Only a few elderly are visiting with the bulk of customers coming from tourists.
“During the last two years that the balneotherapy allowance has been cut, we are trying to switch to another type of visitors. We have changed the spas’ orientation because elderly people cannot financially respond to it,” Rigas Oikonomou, President of the municipal Public Benefit Corporation of the Kassandria Municipality, stated.
The situation concerning the visits of elderly people to the rest spa towns is similar. “The spa towns will wait until September and October to see if elderly people will have money in order to realize visits. If, however, the situation continues like this, there will be a big decline this year,” Anestis Anastasiadis, President of the Pan-Hellenic Association of Thermal Springs and Spas, said.
According to Anastasiadis, the fact that the season may close with a fall of 70 percent in relation to 2012, a year during which a reduction at 30 percent of visits to thermal spas had already been recorded, cannot be excluded.

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