Hotels offered Eurobank funding to help restart tourism

Eurobank is making a 750 million euro ($821 million) funding package available to help Greek hotels and support tourism, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis.

Rebooting the tourism sector, which employs about one in five Greeks, is viewed as central to lessening the impact of an expected deep recession, with the European Commission estimating Greece's economy may contract by 9.7 percent this year.

"Eurobank is the bank of Greek tourism, we are there not only for the sunny days," Eurobank's CEO Fokion Karavias told reporters on Tuesday. "Supporting the hotels sector, the heart of the tourism industry, is important for the economy."

Greece's third-largest lender said it will offer hotel operators more than 250 million euros of immediate liquidity to help cover their working capital needs this year.

It will also offer to suspend repayments of...