Itanos Gaia Strategic Investment Confimed

The investor’s request for the inclusion of its investment proposal in the Strategic Investments Procedures of Law No. 3894/10 has been approved by the Interministerial Committee for Strategic Investments-ICSI (Official Government Gazette 3294, Issue B, December 10th 2012), and the investment has been included in the Fast Track procedure. The project’s inclusion, was followed by the ICSI’s decision no. 23/13-11-2013 (Official Government Gazette 2931, Issue B’, November 20th 2013), which approved the establishment of a Special Plan for the Spatial Development (ΕΣΧΑΣΕ) of the Strategic Investment "ITANOS GAIA", according to procedure of Article 24 of Law 3894/2010, as applicable, under the new transitional provision of Article 5 § 5 of Law 4146/2013.

ITANOS GAIA is about a tourism development of five luxurious hotels of total capacity of 1.936 beds. The project includes an 18 hole heathland golf and international level spa. The overall investment cost amounts to € 267,7 Million. Project Owner is the British Company «Loyalward Ltd.» a wholly owned subsidiary of Minoan Group Plc. which is listed in the Exchange of London and is active on the tourism and the travel sector.

ITANOS GAIA was considered to be an obvious strategic investment with multiple quantitative and qualitative significant impacts on the overall national economy, which will contribute to the exit of the country from the financial crisis  with the creation of 1200 equivalent new direct jobs and an important number of indirect jobs, the prolongation of the tourism period, the improvement of the competitiveness of the Greek Tourism product while also the benefit from taxes, duties and social security contributions.

The Project has been designed in a sustainable manner utilizing innovative technologies aiming at zero impact on available water resources and will be supported by an accredited environmental management system aiming to ensure all environmental parameters of the project.