Is Silver Economy a New Way of Tourism Potential for Greece?

The need to travel appears to be innate in humans. Exploring one’s surroundings is prevalent at birth. A child will wander around looking with keen interest at his/her environment. As people grow older, they feel the need to see different parts of their world. For example, many young people will embark on an overseas trip during or after completing their education. The older population has the time to travel and experience the world that may have eluded them during the years of raising a family or pursuing career commitments. Higher income enables greater exploration. The United Nations (1948, Article 24) have declared that “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”, with everyone assumed to have the right to leisure for developing every aspect of his/her personality and furthering social integration (European Commission 2006). However, the recent report on Demographic Change and Tourism (DCT) by the World Tourism Organization & European Travel Commission (Demographic change and tourism. World Tourism Organization & European Travel Commission, Madrid 2010) has highlighted that the demographic changes in modern societies have created new challenges for the development of tourism due to their implications on tourism participation behaviour (see also Nickerson 2000; Reece 2004). Litrell, Paige, and Song 2004) described senior travelers as becoming an important travel segment because of their level of wealth, higher discretionary income, lower consumer debt, greater free time to travel, and their tendency to travel greater distances and for longer lengths of time. Huang and Tsai 2003) found that seniors will soon be one of the largest prospective market segments for the hospitality and travel industries. A marked shift in interests from beach and shopping to culture, nature and food opens additional business prospects to accommodate those who now enjoy the extension of a long-term hobby or the opportunity to try something entirely new. But what policy makers in Greece can actually do to develop and expand silver economy tourism in order to combat economic crisis as well as tackle down seasonality thus create a supplementary sustainable and viable tourism product in Greece?