Τhe 8th Posidonia Sea Tourism Forum’s Conference and Exhibition will be held in Heraklion, Crete, taking place on May 6-7, 2025. Crete is Greece’s largest island and one of its most popular and long-established tourism and cruise destinations and Heraklion is the island’s major city and a significant air and sea hub. Heraklion port is the island’s biggest port and serves as both a homeport and transit port with immense growth potential and is expected to welcome some 225 calls in 2024.

The impressive rebound of cruise tourism in the post-pandemic years has enabled the industry to resume its dynamic growth trajectory. For ports and destinations, as well as for service providers, the return to normality has been a slower and more complicated process.

At the same time, there has been a great deal of press coverage relating to over-tourism in a number of cities and destinations throughout the Mediterranean. Is this a new reality that the tourism industry must come to terms with or is it actually a phenomenon of circumstantial overcrowding or even limited to specific locations? Can the cruise sector effectively help mitigate overcrowding in some of the marquee destinations that seem to be most affected?