{"id":496739,"date":"2026-02-22T12:22:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T12:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496739\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T12:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T12:22:18","slug":"koufonisi-a-tiny-island-aglow-in-hotel-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496739\/","title":{"rendered":"Koufonisi: A tiny island aglow in hotel stars"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                            <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"960\" height=\"600\" class=\"picture-main-block-image\" data-nxsrc=\"https:\/\/www.ekathimerini.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/koufonisi.jpg\" alt=\"Koufonisi: A tiny island aglow in hotel stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/koufonisi-960x600.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>[Shutterstock]<\/p>\n<p>On Ano Koufonisi, the smallest inhabited island in the Cyclades, 22 new hotels have been licensed or are moving toward licensing in the past two years, with five existing units set to expand, intensifying development pressure on the 5.7-square-kilometer island.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, 13 hotels operate on the island. The planned additions \u2013 18 new builds and four conversions of existing properties \u2013 along with five upgrades, will add 19,636 square meters of construction. Projects include three five-star hotels, seven four-star units and others of lower categories. Eight developments exceed 1,000 sq.m., with the largest, a 1,635-sq.m. five-star hotel at Ammouda.<\/p>\n<p>A dispute over the leasing of beaches at Pori and Italida \u2013 ultimately canceled by the Finance Ministry \u2013 brought to the forefront the island\u2019s haphazard development.<\/p>\n<p>Since 2018, 90 building permits totaling about 23,500 sq.m. have been issued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[Shutterstock] On Ano Koufonisi, the smallest inhabited island in the Cyclades, 22 new hotels have been licensed or&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496740,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,11758,75,84166,44,6771],"class_list":["post-496739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-construction","tag-environment","tag-islands","tag-news","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}