Ready to party: post-lockdown life brings wealthy buyers back to Mykonos
On the party island of Mykonos the music is playing again. DJs are back in the bars, where curfews have been relaxed this week, umbrellas are back on the beaches and the serpentine, whitewashed alleyways of the old port are again thrumming with tourists. “It feels almost like Covid is disappearing and so everyone is much more relaxed,” says French architect Aude Mazelin, who holidayed on the island as a student 23 years ago and never left. Today, she lives in a house she refurbished on Paraga Beach, next door to Scorpios, a bohemian beach club full of driftwood daybeds and macramé hammocks where drinking and dining has resumed after lockdown measures. “Last summer, it was like going back to how the island was when I first arrived: all the beaches were empty, it was so quiet!” This has not been great news for the island’s estate agents, for whom villa sales virtually dried up. “We don’t want another 2020 but this year, thankfully, the island has suddenly opened up and we have some buyers arriving,” says Roi Deldimou, of estate agency Beauchamp Estates.
International tourists and property hunters were largely absent last summer due to travel restrictions and, after a much-delayed start to the season, are only just beginning to return — although Middle Eastern visitors are still noticeably absent, Deldimou adds. Greece officially opened its doors to tourists in mid-May, and its government plans to vaccinate all 700,000 adult residents of its islands by the end of June. As of this week, nearly 9,500 of Mykonos’s local population of 11,922 had been vaccinated, mainly with the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.