Eureka! Institutional Repository

During the last decade, the global community has come face to face with a serious financial crisis. Many countries and specially countries with relatively small population and unprepared to face the consequences and of a crisis of such a magnitude they very quickly found themselves in a dead end situation. Greece was and still is one of those countries having already enormous financial losses in all aspects of the economy. The consequences on both the urban and the rural society were significant. This thesis explores the consequences on the urban society. The community of Pefkochori in Chalkidiki, Greece has been chosen as a case study. It is a community which during the last two decades has turned mostly to tourist activities, maintaining though up to a certain extend its rural character. A research was carried out via the means of questionnaires in a sample of residents of Pefkochori, Chalkidiki, with intent to investigate the changes that were result of the financial crisis in regards to rural and non rural activities. The research was conducted during October and November 2016. The main conclusion is that despite the financial crisis, there was no a big turn towards the rural sector and this is mainly due to the intense tourist activity. The financial crisis brought huge changes in the tourism sector of the community starting a new era, without though forcing the people to turn to other activities.