A significant part of an economy is driven by the tourism and leisure service sectors, each with its own challenges and characteristics.

Tourism, a national industry for countries like Greece, as well as others that compete in the global tourism market, is a multi-sectoral, stakeholder intensive, capital demanding and people driven industry.

As such, the challenges faced by the tourism sector typically involve:

• Increase in demand for existing tourist services.
• Development of new products and services.
• Improvement of the operational and financial performance of sector enterprises.
• Upgrade of the product offering key constituents (i.e. human resources, technology, infrastructure).

The most influential driver in relation to the above challenges is the tourist experience, which derives from the integration of a diverse set of interactions that are part of a tourist’s visit to a destination life cycle, such as: travel, accommodation, recreational, commercial or service engagement, etc.

As a result of the above, addressing the sector challenges involves a broad mandate that may include strategy development and operationalization, as well as action implementation.  This happens across a number of key areas, both at the national or regional administration (macro) and the enterprise (micro) level:

• Administration (macro) level: policy development, legislation, regulation, funding, capacity and infrastructure development.
• Enterprise (micro) level: strategy development, business planning, organizational and operational restructuring, human resources, technology and infrastructure development, project management and corporate finance services.

Leisure, while clearly linked with tourism, is at the same time a sector that addresses a significant volume of domestic demand across a number of themes such as: Entertainment, Sports and Gaming.

Gaming in particular is one of the most rapidly developing and changing business areas within the leisure sector, with main developments driven by:

• Privatization – gaming activities (lotteries, electronic games, betting, etc.) traditionally run by state entities in various jurisdictions are frequently becoming the object of long term concession contracts where private parties are managing and supporting the operations of such gaming activities.
• Regulation – the need to impose controls on gaming behaviours that foster responsible gaming, as well as the containment of illegal gaming activity, lead to the establishment of bodies and procedures to take such regulatory action, and to the adaptation of gaming organizations to the new requirements.
• Technology – the availability of new technologies, especially for mobile and interconnected/social gaming, allow for new/upgraded game development and require radical changes in the commercial offering and the whole value chain of existing or emerging gaming operators.

PLANET has been actively involved in tourism and leisure/gaming sector engagements to support, in the above context, national and regional administrations as well as enterprises in Greece and abroad.  Our internal capabilities are significantly strengthened through collaboration with prominent sector experts (local and international), as well as with leading advisory and other professional services firms.