Topping the list of surprises was the attempted coup in Turkey, the rise terrorism in Europe generally and the continuing flow of refugees into Greece from Turkey.

"These had a negative influence on travellers, especially from the strong European and North American markets impacting not only Greece, but Europe generally," said Anastasiadis.

However, they have led to led cruise ship operators to limit their calls to Greece for 2017. He said the East Mediterranean and West Mediterranean "were functional" and the problem in the East Med is not just the situation in Turkey, from which Greece could benefit if the country would only recognise the serious lack of infrastructure, especially as cruise ships are getting ever larger.

Indeed, he slammed Greek infrastructure. "We have to improve the service we offer and upgrade the infrastructure. The situation in Turkey should not impact our tourism in 2017," he said, but the problems of moving large numbers of people around in an organised fashion is a major one, for Piraeus and Athens, let alone the islands.

He said already it's known there will be a reduction of 30% in Greek calls, but added, "it is too early to know if this will mean a similar reduction in passengers". "If the ships are full, passenger numbers will not be down so much."

In 2016 Celestyal carried 117,000 passengers in Greece and made some 660,000 passenger visits. Further, the company's vessels home-porting in Greece contributed some Euro 110m to the Greek economy in 2016. Regarding cruising in Cuba, this year the number of passengers will be up by about 63% to 39,000.

Celestyal lamented the lack of shiprepair facilities in Greece, with Pythagoras Nagos, the company's commercial manager, telling Shippax the company can "no longer seek quotes from Greek yards as there are no docks operating" and "vessels have to be sent to Turkey or Malta for repairs and maintenance".

Anastasiadis said Celestyal welcomed the privatisation of Piraeus port, and the new Cosco management is keen to expand cruising, "though it is unfamiliar with cruising". He said "Cosco has approached Celestyal which is now working on educating Cosco people". Further, he reconfirmed the company is interested in Lavrion port which is close to Athens international airport and "wants to invest, but the size of the port is a problem".

© Shippax / David Glass