While most of Crete and Europe as well, is singing The Crisis Blues, Hersonissos's Star Beach is buzzing, rocking and partying 24/7, as tourists and locals alike enjoy all the services in the now-famous water park.

Time to dig into the secret behind the success . . . time for a one-on-one with general manager Giorgos Froudarakis.

Although born in Germany, Giorgos is originally from the village of Mochos. He started as Star Beach’s manager in 2004.

"The park has existed since 1993," he began. "At first it was only the main bar, a swimming pool and several sunbeds. Every year more parts were added on, extra pools were built and more services were offered.

As Giorgos explained it, Star Beach now stretches out for 45,000 square metres, with seven pools, two lazy rivers, five huge slides, four restaurants including a Chinese, a Mediterranean, a fast food and a snack bar, plus four café-bars.

 
"You can get your hair braided, nails done, and pierce any part of your body, if that's your thing," he explained. "You can get permanent or temporary tattoos. After all that, you can indulge in a variety of water sports, bungee-jump, relax at the spa or have a photo shoot and pick up your gifts for home at the same time.

"Basically, you can be entertained all day long." 

Over the past five to six years Star Beach has become very popular, especially in Holland, but the fever is spreading all over, so we asked Giorgos what changes he made personally.

"Aah," he said, with an easy smile.  "So many things," he began thoughtfully, now sitting straight up. "First we took care of the decor. Before, the park was only united by its name, Star Beach. All decors were different, chairs and umbrellas were all different. I came up with a theme, and with a lot of hard work by our staff we made the whole park look like one. Then, I organized the staff. At first, all services were run separately or rented out so there were a lot of different interests that clashed, resulting in bad service and quality to the customers.

"We took it all back in our own hands. One standard, one goal. We raised the quality of the food; only served brand name drinks and tried, as a family, to please every customer."

It all sounds too good to be true. There’s got to be something that bothers him.

"Sure there is," he replied. "One way or another, bars and clubs in Hersonissos have the idea that we want all of tourism to ourselves. But listen, we could have invested the money we made in opening clubs around Hersonissos. We didn’t do that, we invested in hotels instead. Our three hotels have a total of almost 4,000 beds filled with people that we bring in and they are all out and about on our island every day!"

Anything else? We asked.

"My dream is Turkey," he said straight off. "Let me explain," he continued with a smile. "You know they don’t have something like EOT in Turkey. Over there, everyone in tourism puts money together to go out in groups, or per village, to advertise their area. Isn’t that great? They join forces, they don’t wait for a government to stimulate tourism, they do it themselves and they’ve been bloody successful in doing so. That’s the dream . . . to organize the same, right here!"

While the sun yet again spectacularly set in the calmness of the sea, I gather my notes and slowly but surely understand:  Giorgos just threw a glove in the Hersonissos arena, and I wonder if anyone will pick it up…