Why do “digital nomads” choose Greece – The prospects and motivations in the country

What is it like to be a digital nomad in Greece? What makes people from different parts of the world come to our country and choose it as a place of work for a few months a year or for longer? The community of “digital nomads” has expanded due to telecommuting that has emerged as a necessity during the pandemic, but it is nothing new. Many people whose work does not require a physical presence and mainly use technology have chosen this lifestyle. In recent years, however, the number of digital nomads in Greece has increased and this has given an additional impetus to our country to organize more and provide additional incentives.

What a digital nomad is looking for, even though he lives in different parts of the world and a fixed base is not a priority for his life, is the concept of home. “Feel like you’re at home,” says Haz Memon, 33, from Dubai. The base of his business is in Switzerland and for six years he has chosen different places to work: From Guatemala, Thailand, Spain, even Norway. In the last three years, however, he keeps coming to Greece, specifically to Chania. “I come and stay from three to five months and now I opened a branch of my company in Crete as well. When I met Greece I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the hospitality, the culture, the food. The people here make you feel at home. They invite you to their house, they stop you and tell you “Let’s drink a raki”…”, he says speaking to the Athenian and Macedonian News Agency.

This energy of Greece, the immediacy of the people, the climate and the quality of life that they usually know when they come on vacation, make digital nomads move to our country, as Mr. Hemon mentions.

“We may be constantly moving but we are always looking to feel like we are at home.” We find this in Greece”, he notes and explains that our country has enormous potential in this field, although it is still at the beginning. Crete, like Athens, has the infrastructure to support digital nomads but as he says, many destinations, especially islands, do not have businesses open in the winter so that someone can live as they want there, while the connection with the mainland is limited.

However, as one of the branches of his business concerns real estate, he has seen a huge increase in the demand for real estate from digital nomads in Greece and he believes that the fact that Greece has the infrastructure and can accept digital nomads should be promoted even more .

For this reason, Marketing Greece created the Work from Greece platform where it provides all the information a digital native needs for his relocation and his life in Greece.

“From the data we have from Work from Greece, which acts as a central platform for information, the first markets concerning digital nomads are the USA, the UK, Germany and Russia. In fact, there is a lot of mobility from Russia when the political thermometer rises there and they are looking for ways to come to Greece”, points out the CEO of Marketing Greece, Ioanna Dretta.

“Their quality characteristics are such that we are interested as a country. They want to understand the destination, get in touch with locals and socialize with the local community and with their own communities, which of course are created where there are many digital nomads and which we also promote through Work from Greece. It’s not just that they come and create an economic ecosystem, they mainly come in the off-season, so this is an element of sustainable tourism development and mitigating seasonality, while at the same time they create a network of ambassadors very important for the country and for its brand,” he notes Mrs. Dretta.

Jerome Bajou, Co-Founder CaptainBook.io and WorkFromNaxos.gr is French but has been living in Naxos for the last 12 years. He was working in London in a very demanding job that deprived him of the ability to have a quality of life. So he decided to move to Greece, maintaining his own company that he created in London and in which he can work remotely. Today, together with his wife, he has his own business, a French cafe-pastry shop in the port of Naxos. “I came to Greece 12 years ago as a digital nomad but now my base is in Naxos, where I live and work with my Greek wife. I also continue to work remotely for my other company which is based in London, but which is mine and I can manage it. In Naxos we also have a great time in the winter. We are 22,000 people, it is a big island”, says Mr. Bajou.

He is a peculiar digital nomad, since now Greece has become his home, but it is an exciting process, but not so easy. “You have to want it, it also has to do with the nature of your work… it depends on what you want from your life because it’s not easy. Greece, however, has huge prospects in this field. In winter, most accommodations do not work. If we can attract people and have two or three more hotels open, cafes, bars, taverns… we will all benefit from this. Digital nomads are a “new blood”, people who have other experiences, who have seen something different, different experiences that enrich the culture of a place”, notes Mr. Bajou.

RES-EMP

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