It has been announced that the ferry company of Turkey’s İzmir Metropolitan Municipality has initiated a new route to the Greek island of Lesvos that their catamarans will traverse starting in May of 2017.
According to Thrasos Kalogridis, the head of Northern Aegean Islands Economic Development Agency (EOAEN), regular trips will start in May in efforts to help boost tourism to the Aegean Sea as it has been impacted quite negatively by the current migrant crisis as it is a hotspot for migrants arriving from Turkey attempting to enter the EU.
The catamarans, informally called “cats” are owned by the İzdeniz Company. The idea is to connect the over 4 million citizens living in İzmir with a route to Lesvos to promote tourism from the access port of Alsancak.
“It is a significant target for Lesbos to connect directly with İzmir…We met with İzmir Metropolitan Mayor Aziz Kocaoğlu to realize this target and we decided to start İzdeniz catamaran tours between these two destination catamarans. Two catamarans are currently under construction and will be submitted in April 2017. The tours will then start. The first tour will likely start on May 17, 2017,” Kalogridis commented according to hurriyetdailynews.com.
The launching of the tours from İzmir is projecting a possible 30 percent increase in tourism on Lesvos. However, it remains to be seen how many people will opt to tour the island given the media’s coverage of the migrant crisis in Greece.
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