Anthia Vlassopoulou
Co-founder and CEO, Greece Insiders
Writing about Greek travel since 2012 · Based in Athens
Anthia Vlassopoulou is the co-founder and CEO of Greece Insiders, the licensed Greek travel company she helped start in 2012. She has travelled Greece end to end, from its best-known islands to villages most visitors never reach. On this blog she writes about the country she knows first hand, through the people who live in it.
Why Anthia started Greece Insiders
Greece Insiders began in 2012 with one belief: the only real way to know a place is from within. Not the postcard version, but the reality just under it. That meant building the company around people rather than itineraries, and around local guides, cooks, boat owners and artisans who actually live the places guests visit.
Since then the company has planned trips for more than 50,000 travellers, according to its own records. Anthia still shapes the itineraries herself, and she still tests the routes before anyone else gets sent on them.
How Anthia knows Greece
Her first credential is the country itself. Anthia has travelled Greece from end to end, and not only its five-star corners. Many of its wildest and most remote parts she first reached on foot, walking them with her scout group long before she ever booked a hotel there. That habit stuck. She still hikes, and she still turns up in places with no listing and no reviews.
The second credential is her network. After more than a decade of building the company, she knows people in nearly every region of Greece: the family who runs the taverna, the guide who reads the site properly, the captain who knows when not to sail. That web is why she can answer questions a guidebook cannot.
She trained as an interior designer and worked for years as an event planner. Both show up in how she writes about a place. She notices light, texture, timing and atmosphere, and she cares about how a day actually feels rather than how many sights it fits in.
What Anthia writes about
- Planning a first trip to Greece, and how long to spend where
- Island hopping: which combinations work, and which ones look good only on a map
- Athens beyond the Acropolis, including neighbourhoods, food and design
- Lesser-known mainland regions, hiking routes and mountain villages
- Greek food and the producers behind it
- Travelling in Greece with children, and travelling out of season
Featured in
| Publication | Detail |
|---|---|
| Forbes (2021) | Quoted throughout “The Best Of Athens According To Greece Insiders” by Jim Dobson, on where to eat, stay and swim around Athens. |
Credentials and recognition
| Type | Detail |
|---|---|
| Licence | Greece Insiders is licensed by the Greek National Tourism Organization, Reg. No. 0206E60000824500. |
| Award | Stelios Awards winner, 2017. |
| Memberships | Greek Tourism Confederation (2015), Hellenic Association of Tourist & Travel Agencies (2015), Hellenic Association of Tourism Enterprises in Outdoor Activities (2019), Hellenic Spanish Chamber of Commerce (2017), EGG innovative entrepreneurship programme (2013), XO Private (2020). |
| Traveller ratings | Tripadvisor Travellers’ Choice 2026, rated 5.0 from 288 reviews. Trustpilot score 4.9 from 93 reviews. |
Away from the desk
Anthia lives in Athens with her two children. She makes jewellery by hand, spends more time in galleries than she admits to, and is happiest either talking to the people behind a destination or halfway up a mountain trail in her walking boots.
Questions people ask
Who is Anthia Vlassopoulou? Anthia Vlassopoulou is the co-founder and CEO of Greece Insiders, a licensed Greek travel company founded in 2012 and based in Athens. She plans trips across Greece and writes about the country on the company blog.
What qualifies her to write about travel in Greece? She has run a licensed Greek travel company since 2012 and has travelled the country end to end, including remote areas she first reached on foot. She works with local partners in nearly every region, and her views on Greek travel have been quoted in Forbes.
Where can I read more of her work? Her articles are listed below, newest first.
