Will More Indian Tourists Visit Greece on their Way to Paris and London
Direct flights from India to the Crete airport in Greece, being built by GMR, could attract Indians visiting Europe
(Photo: Srinivas Bommidala, right, with Christos Dimas, Greece’s Minister of Infrastructure and Transport. © Global Indian Times.)
December 11, 2025
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Airports are economic engines, Srinivas Bommidala, Chairman, Energy & International Airports, GMR Group, said at a forum in New York this week. The new Kastelli Airport in Crete, Greece, will handle 15 million passengers a year, nearly double the current capacity, once it becomes fully operational, after its start in late 2027. Bommidala was conversing with Christos Dimas, Greece’s Minister of Infrastructure and Transport, at the Invest in Greece Forum, organized by Capital Link.
The Kastelli Airport, which GMR is jointly developing, will further boost tourism, which accounts for a fifth of the Greek economy.
GMR will operate and manage the Kastelli Airport, also known as Crete airport, with joint venture partner Terna S.A., a Greek infrastructure company. The project also involves the design, construction, financing, operation, and maintenance of connecting roads totaling about 15 miles. The airport contract is for a period of 35 years, including the first phase of construction of five years. The cost of the first phase of is reported to be roughly $600 million.
Speaking of the economic impact of airports, Bommidala said that the Delhi International Airport, which GMR built and operates, creates more than $40 billion in annual economic value. The airport handles 109 million passengers a year, including 15 million transit passengers. It directly and indirectly supports one and a half million jobs, Bommidala added. The airport is powered by green energy, including hydropower and on-site solar panels, and is accessible by the Delhi Metro rail transit system. There are 12 hotels with 4,600 rooms; two more hotels are under construction.
GMR operates six airports handling 120 million passengers a year. Five of them are in India, including in Hyderabad, Nagpur, Goa, and Bidar, in addition to Delhi. It operates the Kualanamu International Airport, Indonesia. GMR is constructing two airports, including in Kastelli.
GMR Airport’s business includes Duty-Free stores, retail, food and beverage, cargo handling and car parking. The company has a market value of around $11 billion. It is part of New Delhi based GMR Group, which was founded in 1978 by Grandhi Mallikarjuna Rao. According to Forbes, Rao, 75-years-old, has a net worth of $3.8 billion.
The group’s other businesses operate in Energy and Transportation and urban infrastructure, including industrial and port-based projects in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. In sports, the group is part-owner of the Seattle Orcas, along with other investors including Satya Nadella, Chief Executive of Microsoft. The Orcas compete in the US Major League Cricket tournament.
The GMR businesses are run by a family council, chaired by Rao, which includes son-in-law Srinivas Bommidala, and sons Kiran K. Grandhi and G.B.S. Raju. Their motto, according to Business Today, is: run the family like a business, run the business like a family.
Bommidala, 65-years-old, is from a family in Andhra Pradesh, India, who are in the tobacco business. In 1982, after graduating from college, he joined the family business which he diversified into aerated water bottling plants.
As a founder Director of GMR Group, Bommidala, together with Rao, oversaw the group’s energy business. In 2006, as GMR group expanded its infrastructure business, Bommidala was the first Managing Director of the Delhi Airport, leading its transition from a government-run entity to a public private partnership enterprise. Two years later, he took over as the Chairman of GMR’s infrastructure, highways, construction, and airport property development businesses. He also led the Group’s expansion into sports.
From 2012 to 2018, Bommidala served as the Chairman of GMR’s airports business. Since 2018, he has run GMR Group’s Energy portfolio along with its international airports business.
The new Kastelli Airport in Greece is 25 minutes from Heraklion, the main urban center on Crete Island. It will include 19 boarding gates and a 2,000-yard runway. Bommidala said GMR would like to expand the project, including build and operate hotels, as it typically does at other airports it builds and operates.
Greece has a population of 10.5 million. Each year, 24 million foreign tourists, mainly from the West, visit Greece in the summer for its beaches. Roughly three million Indians travel to Europe, though in the winter. While Paris, London and Rome are their popular destinations, few of them visit Greece.
Besides its beaches with pink sand, Crete is known for its archaeological sites, including the Palace of Knossos, of the Minoan civilization period, and historic cities including Chania and Reythmno. Both Dimas and Bommidala expect that direct flights from India to Greece, including to the new Crete airport, and the cultural and historic sites will attract more Indian tourists to Greece.
Christos Dimas, Greece’s Minister of Infrastructure said at the Capital Link Conference that attracting more Indian tourists will help extend Greece’s tourist season into the winter months.
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