• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Articles
  • News
  • Events
  • Advertize
  • Jobs
  • Courses
  • Contact
  • (0)
  • LoginRegister
    • Facebook
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS
      Articles
      News
      Events
      Job Posts
    • Twitter
Datafloq

Datafloq

Data and Technology Insights

  • Categories
    • Big Data
    • Blockchain
    • Cloud
    • Internet Of Things
    • Metaverse
    • Robotics
    • Cybersecurity
    • Startups
    • Strategy
    • Technical
  • Big Data
  • Blockchain
  • Cloud
  • Metaverse
  • Internet Of Things
  • Robotics
  • Cybersecurity
  • Startups
  • Strategy
  • Technical

Sun, sea and cybernauts: the long road for Greece’s digital nomads

Reuters / 3 min read.
April 7, 2021
floq.to/Ox6VD

By Karolina Tagaris

AEGINA, Greece (Reuters) – From her garden on a sunny Greek island, Rowena Harding works with governments and charities across the globe.

“The great thing is I can do my job from anywhere,” the Australian-British communications consultant says. “I’m able to talk to clients in Myanmar, clients in Rwanda. This morning I’ve been working on northeast Nigeria, all from here, a Greek island.”

The push to attract a community of footloose remote workers is among the green and digital reforms Greece hopes will help revive its economy and restore its international image after more than a decade of crisis.

It also hopes to boost tourism after the industry’s worst year in decades plunged it back into recession in 2020.

Yet for a country near the bottom of the European Union’s digital economy rankings, the road to becoming a hub for digital nomads – like Bali or Mallorca – is long and strewn with technological and bureaucratic hurdles.

Whether it can succeed just a few years after emerging from the biggest bailout in history will provide a test of Greece’s ability to reshape its economy for a post-pandemic world.

Sitting on a beach near her home, Harding lists the reasons she moved from Thailand to Aegina, one of the Saronic islands a short ferry ride from Athens: low coronavirus infection rates, weather, good food and a nice attitude to enjoying life.

Beyond sun, sea and lifestyle, Greece is planning visas and offering a 50% income tax cut for seven years for professionals who move there. It also wants to lure back some of the 800,000 young Greeks who emigrated during the long downturn that followed the 2009 global financial crisis.

“If you can work from anywhere, why not work from Greece?” Tourism Minister Harry Theoharis told Reuters, citing research estimating a 1.6 billion euro revenue gain for every 100,000 workers who stay for six months.

But despite Greece’s “great potential”, many are staying for weeks, not months, because of problems ranging from slow WiFi to inflexible visa rules, said David Williams, CEO of global housing marketplace NomadX.

While Greece has attracted investment by tech champions Tesla and Amazon, it fares well below European averages on connectivity, internet use and digital public services, standing second to last in the European Commission’s 2020 Digital Economy and Society Index.

Greece’s fixed broadband internet is slower than Tajikistan’s, where just a quarter of the population is online, according to the Speedtest Global Index, which ranked Greece 98th in February.

WORK, PARADISE AND BUREAUCRACY

Last month, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis outlined a multi-billion plan dubbed “Greece 2.0” including investments in 5G networks, which Greece began rolling out in December to reinforce its attractiveness.

“You want to be able to look at the sea out of your window as you work, but you want to make sure the laptop is connected,” tourism minister Theoharis said.

Driven by the pandemic, home working is expected to double in 2021, a U.S.-based Enterprise Technology Research survey found.

Eager to compete with Portugal’s Madeira island, which set up a digital nomad village, Greece’s Rhodes launched a Digital Nomads Observatory. On Crete, a project called “Work & Paradise” promises the chance to work from poolside villas.

Without a digital nomads’ registry, it is difficult to determine how many are in Greece. The Facebook group “Digital Nomads Athens” counts 3,600 members from countries including Ireland, France, the United States and Estonia.

Sanne Goslinga, director of talent at Marathon Venture Capital, who moved from Berlin, received several LinkedIn messages from people interested in jobs in Greece.

“Generation Z are risk-takers; they say ‘I’ll just go and see and I can always go back to my country’,” she said, referring to those born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s.

Stefanos Bournias, born in Greece and raised in Bali, moved from Amsterdam last March, working for the Latvian translation software start-up Lokalise.

“A part of me wants to see Greece heal many of its problems, especially with human capital and the brain drain,” the 25-year-old said from a co-working space.

Bournias was initially put off by the lack of opportunities, working conditions and wages. As a foreign resident, he waded through “layers and layers of red tape” on things like getting a military exemption or opening a bank account.

“If you disregard all that and you earn a competitive western European salary, the standard of life here is incredible,” he said.

Still, on NomadsList, which ranks the best places for remote workers, Athens is only 65th in a list topped by Lisbon.

For some, such as Harding, the advantages of Greece outweigh setbacks that she said include power outages. She intends to seek residency.

For others, the future is less certain.

“Right now it’s working for me,” Bournias said. “But I guess I’ll probably be leaving at some point.”

(Reporting by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Categories: News
Tags: Amazon, future, rates, survey, technology

About Reuters

Primary Sidebar

E-mail Newsletter

Sign up to receive email updates daily and to hear what's going on with us!

Publish
AN Article
Submit
a press release
List
AN Event
Create
A Job Post

Jobs

  • Software Engineer | South Yorkshire, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer with C# .net Investment House | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Senior Java Developer | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • Software Engineer – Growing Digital Media Company | London, GB - February 07, 2023
  • LBG Returners – Senior Data Analyst | Chester Moor, GB - February 07, 2023
More Jobs
Host your website with Managed WordPress for $1.00/mo with GoDaddy!

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research sales security share social social media software strategy technology twitter

News

  • Candy Crush Saga hits $20 billion revenue milestone, maker King says
  • Musk’s X disabled feature for reporting electoral misinformation – researcher
  • India demands $150 million in taxes from Tiger Global-backed gaming firm Dream11
  • Tesla working on ‘gigacasting’ tech to mould underbody in one piece -report
  • US to indefinitely extend China waiver for South Korean chipmakers -Yonhap
More News

Related Online Courses

  • Oracle Cloud Data Management Foundations Workshop
  • Data Science at Scale
  • Statistics with Python
More courses

Footer


Datafloq is the one-stop source for big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence. We offer information, insights and opportunities to drive innovation with emerging technologies.

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Recent

  • 5 Reasons Why Modern Data Integration Gives You a Competitive Advantage
  • 5 Most Common Database Structures for Small Businesses
  • 6 Ways to Reduce IT Costs Through Observability
  • How is Big Data Analytics Used in Business? These 5 Use Cases Share Valuable Insights
  • How Realistic Are Self-Driving Cars?

Search

Tags

AI Amazon analysis analytics app application Artificial Intelligence BI Big Data business China Cloud Companies company costs crypto customers Data design development digital environment experience future Google+ government information learning machine learning market mobile Musk news Other public research sales security share social social media software strategy technology twitter

Copyright © 2023 Datafloq
HTML Sitemap| Privacy| Terms| Cookies

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WhatsApp

In order to optimize the website and to continuously improve Datafloq, we use cookies. For more information click here.

Dear visitor,
Thank you for visiting Datafloq. If you find our content interesting, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter:

Did you know that you can publish job posts for free on Datafloq? You can start immediately and find the best candidates for free! Click here to get started.

Not Now Subscribe

Thanks for visiting Datafloq
If you enjoyed our content on emerging technologies, why not subscribe to our weekly newsletter to receive the latest news straight into your mailbox?

Subscribe

No thanks

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.

Marketing cookies

This website uses Google Analytics to collect anonymous information such as the number of visitors to the site, and the most popular pages.

Keeping this cookie enabled helps us to improve our website.

Please enable Strictly Necessary Cookies first so that we can save your preferences!