In recent years, tourism policy has increasingly moved beyond its traditional economic orientation, emerging as a strategic domain of international cooperation, diplomacy, and geopolitical positioning. As states seek to expand tourism flows, diversify markets, and enhance international visibility, tourism policy is increasingly shaped through negotiated arrangements involving multiple levels of governance and diverse actors. Building on the Negotiation Framework for a Dynamically Expanding Tourism Policy (NEFTOUR), previously introduced and empirically grounded through the case of the Memorandum of Understanding signed on May 2, 2025, at the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) in Dubai between the Greek National Tourism Organization (GNTO) and Emirates Airline - thereby inaugurating a strategic tourism partnership between Greece and the United Arab Emirates - this paper extends the framework to examine the most recent tourism cooperation agreement between Greece and China.
According to available official reporting and credible sources up to early 2026, the latest nationwide bilateral framework remains the Joint Action Programme on Tourism Cooperation for the period 2022 - 2024, signed on 14 March 2022 between the Greek Ministry of Tourism and the Chinese Embassy in Athens. The Programme provides for structured collaboration in tourism promotion, exchange of expertise and know-how, joint participation in tourism exhibitions and events, and broader institutional coordination, and it continues to function as the principal formal framework guiding bilateral tourism cooperation between the two countries.
The NEFTOUR framework conceptualizes negotiation as a foundational mechanism of tourism policymaking, integrating interest-based negotiation theory, game theory, multi-level governance, and the concept of soft power. Within this perspective, tourism expansion is understood as a negotiated process through which economic objectives, geopolitical considerations, and symbolic interests are aligned and institutionalized. By applying this framework, the paper explores how tourism agreements function not only as instruments of market access and connectivity, but also as vehicles of strategic influence, cultural diplomacy, and international positioning.
The selection of the Greece - China case is analytically significant due to the complementary yet asymmetrical nature of the bilateral relationship. Greece represents a culturally dense and geopolitically strategic European destination seeking to diversify tourism flows, mitigate seasonality, strengthen year-round demand, and enhance its visibility within high-potential long-haul markets. China, by contrast, constitutes one of the world’s most influential outbound tourism actors, with tourism cooperation embedded within broader diplomatic, economic, and connectivity strategies that extend across global corridors. This asymmetry in economic scale and political power renders the case particularly suitable for examining how negotiated tourism cooperation unfolds under conditions of unequal capabilities, while still enabling mutual value creation.
Methodologically, the study employs qualitative analysis of institutional agreements, policy documents, and strategic discourse to examine negotiation dynamics, actor interests, and policy outcomes. The analysis focuses on how Greece and China articulate and reconcile their respective objectives through tourism cooperation, including market expansion, connectivity enhancement, destination branding, and cultural influence. Particular attention is paid to the role of negotiation in mediating power asymmetries and transforming tourism policy into an instrument of soft power and symbolic diplomacy.
The findings indicate that tourism expansion emerges through negotiated alignment of interests rather than unilateral imposition or purely economic calculation. Despite disparities in economic and political power, the tourism agreement between Greece and China demonstrates how structured negotiation processes can generate reciprocal benefits, reinforce institutional cooperation, and support broader foreign policy objectives. Tourism cooperation thus operates as a strategic mechanism of mutual positioning, enabling states to project influence, enhance cultural visibility, and consolidate their roles within the global tourism system.
Finally, by applying the NEFTOUR framework to the Greece - China case, this paper contributes to tourism and negotiation scholarship by illustrating how expanding tourism policy functions as a negotiated instrument of foreign policy within contemporary international relations. It further demonstrates the analytical value of NEFTOUR as a transferable framework for examining tourism expansion across diverse geopolitical contexts, reinforcing tourism’s role as a field of strategic governance, negotiated power, and soft power projection.
Keywords: Negotiations, Tourism, Expanding Policy, Soft Power, Negotiation Framework for a Dynamically Expanding Tourism Policy (NEFTOUR), Strategy, Bilateral Cooperation
