page_title: Yerakini
section_title: Seaside tourism
hierarchical_section_title: Yerakini / Economy / Seaside / Seaside tourism
caption_attribution_description: Gerakina Beach Hotel and Bungalows resort complex main entrance, at Yerakini(Gerakini) eastern beach, Chalkidiki, Central Macedonia, Greece, Jun 2014
context_page_description: Yerakini or Gerakini is a village in the Chalkidiki peninsula in Central Macedonia, Northern Greece.
  It has been the port of nearby Polygyros, the capital town of Chalkidiki, ever since its settlement. Its beaches attract thousands of tourists and holidaymakers during the summer. It has the largest magnesite deposits in Northern Greece.
context_section_description: Tourism in Chalkidiki officially began in the late 1950s (Tourism Development Plan by PM Konstantinos Karamanlis), and in the late 1960s it was declared one of four areas of “Prime Zone for Tourism Development in Greece”, the other three being Corfu, Rhodes and Crete.
  The people of Polygyros and other villages in the north used to go swimming mainly to Yerakini central beach in the 1950s, also until today. Yerakini seaside area was inhabited for many years by a number of year-round residents (mostly fishermen in the past), some taverners and the customs officer's family. The first foreigners who visited Yerakini as a seaside resort were directors of  the Anglo-Greek Magnesite Co. Ltd. and their families in the early years of the twentieth century, who had summer cottages by the sea, and crew members of the small bulk cargo vessels that used to arrive from abroad for freighting magnesite.
  The Yerakini seaside began its development in 1959 when the official tourism development began and the first public tourist pavilion  started operating at the seaside. Similar pavilions opened in Olympiada and Ierissos. In the early 1970s the first hotel and bungalows summer resort in Chalkidiki, Gerakina Beach Hotel, opened at the eastern beach, 600 m from the central beach (currently operating, after reconstruction, under the new trade name Ikos Olivia), and later more accommodation and other facilities were built for the increasing number of holidaymakers.
caption: Gerakina Beach Hotel and bungalows on part of eastern beach
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