(Updates with financial hit on hotels)
ATHENS, Sept 23 (Reuters) - About 50,000 tourists are
stranded in Greece, mainly on islands, after British travel firm
Thomas Cook collapsed, a Greek tourism ministry official told
Reuters on Monday.
The tourists, mainly British, were vacationing on the
islands of Zakynthos, Kos, Corfu, Skiathos and Crete, the
official said.
"The top priority now is to get them back home," the
official said, declining to be named.
Thomas Cook, one of Britain's oldest companies, ran hotels,
resorts and airlines for 19 million people a year in 16
countries.
The head of Greece's hotel federation said Thomas Cook's
financial collapse would be a significant blow for hoteliers,
since many vacation packages were not prepaid.
"The situation is quite difficult. It does not affect just
British tourists but other nationalities as well," Grigoris
Tassios told state TV ERT.
He said many hotels were expected to make losses on payments
affecting vacation packages for the last two months, meaning
"many millions of euros."
"Up to October 15 there are high occupancies, so we will
suffer losses from this segment, too," Tassios said.
He said hotel companies would turn to the courts to try and
recover money owed by Thomas Cook.
The company's collapse could be a blow to tourism in its
biggest destinations, including Greece, leaving fuel suppliers
out of pocket and forcing hundreds of travel agents to shut down
across British high streets
But the Greek tourism confederation SETE said the industry
has the depth and quality to overcome the hit. It called on the
government to come up with specific measures to help companies
absorb the problems that will arise.
Greece has been experiencing an upsurge in tourism in the
last years with a record number of 33 million visitors last
year. Tourism accounts for about a quarter of economic output.
(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and George Georgiopoulos,
editing by Larry King)