The Greek tourism industry is one of the biggest in the world that serves more than 30 million visitors on average per year. Therefore the county has invested since the 19th century in institutions that will disseminate the knowledge of hospitality from the housekeeping to the business owners and the ministry personnel.
The tourism schools were founded in 1937 in Athens under the auspices of The Greek National Tourism Organisation (GNTO) and were the initial Schools of Tourism Education to apply the European and Swiss models of tourism studies in their curriculum. In 1956, the Higher School of Tourism Professions of Rhodes (ASTER) was founded while at the same time, more institutions spread to various regions of Greece, under the name of Schools of Tourism Professions (S.T.P.), as a legal entity of public law, within prototypical state hotels facilities.
The Hotel program “Xenia” was established at the beginning of the 1950s in the context of the effort to develop tourism and the creation of “model hotel units” of high standards. This resulted in an open call for the architects of that era to design “model hotel units” of high standards. Great names like Pikionis, Dekavallas, and others formed a team that created an extraordinary vocabulary all hotels would include in their design. Indoor patios, materials like marble, extensive gardens, and paths connected most of the complexes’ areas were only a few of this common vocabulary. Therefore, this project took some of these basic principles and reevaluated them in the contemporary architectural context. As the current needs of the customers and the market constantly shift and adapt to new data, the rethinking of the school is essential to a modernized function of the facilities that meet those needs.
