For Skiathos businesses · Free · Nothing to buy on this page
Twenty-two jobs, all written the same way, so you can skim them in ten minutes and stop when you have what you need.
What is on this page
Back to the business guides · Written August 2026 · Free to read and free to argue with
The whole page in five bullets
Twenty seconds. Every job below carries its own price, time and first step.
Where AI genuinely helps, where it is oversold, and why some of the best jobs here are not AI at all.
Writing a reply. Shortening a paragraph. Turning a photograph of your menu into text a phone can read. Translating all of it into German and Italian in seconds.
That is real, it works today, and most of it costs nothing. Where this page says AI assistant, it means a chat app on your phone, such as ChatGPT.
Anything sold as running your business for you is a year or two early. AI phone answering is the clearest case, and it has its own job on this list saying plainly: not yet.
You are not behind. Most of the island has not done any of this.
Four of the twenty-two do nothing clever at all. They just join your booking systems up.
They stay on the list because for a hotel they move more money than every AI job here put together. Leaving them out to keep the page tidy would be a lie.
Of the 130 places to eat on this island, 40 have nothing we could find online. Some of those are among the best.
A taverna that is full every night without a website is not doing anything wrong. One job done properly beats twenty half done.
No price on this page was invented. Where we could not find one, the job says the price is not known, and four of them do. Every job carries its own sources at the bottom. Where a fact came from our own island research rather than a published source, it says so.
Pick one and the page reorders itself around it. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is saved except on this device.
Showing everything: all 22 jobs, for all six kinds of business.
You have not said what you run yet, so these are the three that come up most often across all six kinds of business. Pick your kind above and they change.
The Google listing is the page most visitors see before they ever see your door, and it costs nothing to own it.
This week: Search your own business name on your phone, as a visitor would. If the listing has no hours, no phone number or no photos, claim it and fix those three things today.
The whole job, with the sourcesA business profile, hours, a greeting, an away message and saved replies, on the phone already in your pocket.
This week: Install WhatsApp Business and fill in the profile and the hours. Then write two messages: a greeting for first contact, and an away message for when you are in service.
The whole job, with the sourcesA photograph of a menu cannot be read out, translated or searched, so to a phone it may as well not be there.
This week: Photograph the menu and ask an AI assistant to type it out as plain text. Read it back against the real menu, correct it, then paste it where guests actually look.
The whole job, with the sourcesEach one shows a title, a line, how long it takes and what it costs. Open the ones you want and leave the rest shut. They run roughly from free and an afternoon, to a quiet week and a spreadsheet.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
Of the 130 places to eat on Skiathos, 40 have nothing we could find online at all. For those 40, the Google listing is the website.
It will also hold your own booking or ordering link, free, and that link goes live in 24 to 48 hours.
Free. Google does not charge for a Business Profile, and does not charge for adding your own booking link to it.
Search your own business name on your phone, as a visitor would. If the listing has no hours, no phone number or no photos, claim it and fix those three things today.
Wrong opening hours do more damage than no opening hours. If you close from November, put that on the listing, or somebody walks up in February and leaves the review that says you were shut.
Writes the description, and translates it into the languages your visitors read. You paste it in.
The hours, the phone number and the photos. Only you know when you actually open.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
We have no figure for what a reply is worth, and will not invent one. Treat it as good manners in public.
It is also one of the few things a small place can do properly that a big one usually cannot be bothered with.
Free. Replying on Google or TripAdvisor costs nothing, and drafting the reply is a small job for any AI assistant you already use.
Take your three most recent reviews. Get a draft reply to each one, in the language the review was written in, then rewrite them until they sound like you.
AI replies all sound the same, and readers notice. Cut the draft in half. Then put in one real detail, the table by the door, or the boat that ran late. It should read like a person was there.
Reads a review in Greek or Italian and drafts your answer in the same language.
The decision to apologise, to offer anything, or to argue. Never argue in public, and never let a machine do it for you.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
This is one of the two or three things AI genuinely does well today, with no catch and nearly no cost. Most of the rest of this page is more complicated than this.
Nothing new to buy. Translating a menu or a page is a small job for whatever AI assistant you already have.
Take the one page or menu that gets read most. Get it into German and Italian, and have a guest or a member of staff who speaks it read it back before you print anything.
Machine translation is excellent at the everyday and poor at the local. Dish names, place names and anything meant as a joke come out wrong, and wrong in a way that is funny to everyone except you.
Translates, and keeps the same tone in each language rather than going formal.
One human read-through per language before anything is printed. Somebody who speaks it will spot in a minute what a machine never will.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
Johnny's takes its reservations on WhatsApp and is ranked 7th of 274 places to eat on the island. A phone with a good away message is a real booking system, not a stopgap.
Free. One phone number, one business, no approvals and no charge per message.
Standard data charges only.
Install WhatsApp Business and fill in the profile and the hours. Then write two messages: a greeting for first contact, and an away message for when you are in service.
Broadcast lists stop at 256 people, and only reach people who have already saved your number as a contact. If they have not saved you, the message is silently dropped and you never find out which ones went nowhere.
Nothing yet. This is set-up, not AI, and it is the step almost everything else in this group stands on.
The replies. In August a two line answer from a person beats anything automatic.
Do not message anybody first unless they gave you their number and separately agreed to be messaged. Greek law (Law 3471/2006, Article 11) requires consent before marketing messages, and Meta's own rules say the same.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments · Boat trip or excursion · Car, bike or scooter hire
A hotel answers the same twenty questions all season. A boat takes day bookings. A car hire desk confirms pick-up times. All three get their answer out while the guest is still deciding. For a taverna that is full every night, this is worth nothing at all.
Nobody publishes a price. You reach this through a software company, and each one sets its own monthly fee.
Get two quotes. Meta's own per-message charges sit on top of that fee.
Write down the twenty questions you genuinely get asked, with your real answers. That list is the actual work.
Whatever tool you buy later just sends those answers out.
Meta banned general purpose 'ask me anything' AI assistants from the WhatsApp Business Platform on 15 January 2026. A narrow assistant about your own business, bookings, hours, menu, directions, is explicitly allowed.
Cross that line and the account gets switched off.
Answers the questions you have already answered a thousand times, at 2am, in the language they asked in.
Anything unusual, anything about money, and anything where the guest is already unhappy. The handover to a person has to actually work.
Since 2 August 2026 the EU AI Act (Article 50) applies. Tell people at the first message that they are talking to AI, unless it is obvious. Meta's rules also require a way to hand the conversation to a real person.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments · Boat trip or excursion · Car, bike or scooter hire
It is worth paying for once two staff are answering the same guest, or nobody is. Below that it is a monthly cost with no return, and the free app does the whole job.
Replies inside the 24 hour window after a customer messages you are free, and have been since 1 November 2024. Marketing messages are charged on every one delivered, at a rate set by the customer's country, not yours.
Meta does not publish Greece as its own market, Greece sits in the 'Rest of Central and Eastern Europe' band. Estimates from outside Meta, for a wider Europe grouping, are around USD 0.08 for a marketing message. A practical one, such as a booking confirmation, is around USD 0.03.
That is a rough guide, not a published Greek price. A software company's monthly fee sits on top, and nobody publishes that either.
Find a spare SIM before you do anything else. The number you register cannot already be on WhatsApp or on the WhatsApp Business app. So do not risk the number printed on your menus.
A brand new account, before Meta has checked who you are, can only message 250 different customers a day. That check needs legal business documents and takes a few working days, so this is not a July job.
Nothing on its own. This is the phone line, not the person answering it.
An assistant, if you want one, sits on top.
Ownership of the inbox. One number with three half-owners is worse than one phone with one owner.
Marketing messages still need consent under Law 3471/2006, Article 11(1). Every message needs a clear sender and a working address for stopping them, under Article 11(4). Whoever sends on your behalf, you are the one answerable.
Who it is for: Taverna or restaurant · Beach bar or canteen
Only 10 of the 130 places to eat on this island take a booking online. The free tools charge nothing per booking, so every cover stays yours.
Tableo has a free plan, up to 100 covers a month, with no commission. GloriaFood's table reservations are free with no per-booking fee.
For comparison, OpenTable is $149 to $499 a month plus $1 to $1.50 per cover it sends you.
Open a free Tableo or GloriaFood account and paste the booking link onto your Google listing. The link is free and goes live in a day or two.
Check the platform actually trades in Greece before you sign anything. TheFork does not list Greece as a market. e-table.gr, the main Greek restaurant platform, wound up after ten years.
OpenTable has Greek listings but effectively no diner network on this island, so you would be paying marketplace prices for your own bookings.
Nothing. This is just joining things up, and it is worth more than most of the AI on this page.
The table plan. No system knows that table 6 is unusable when the wind is up.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments
What a room sold through a big site costs you
On a five night stay priced at EUR 600, every figure rounded
Worth EUR 150 more
Same guest, same five nights. The difference is roughly EUR 150, and it is yours.
A 12 room place taking EUR 150,000 a season through the big sites alone hands over more than EUR 30,000. Moving a quarter of it direct keeps about EUR 7,500 a season, against booking software costing EUR 200 to EUR 500 a year.
Greek hotels are also allowed to be cheaper on their own website. A free European compensation claim is open until 11 September 2026, over the old rules that stopped them.
EUR 200 to EUR 500 a year for small booking software on your own site. Card fees on top: 1.5% plus EUR 0.25 on a European card through Stripe.
Work out your real commission rate. Take last season's Booking.com invoices, add up what you paid, and divide it by the room revenue those bookings brought in.
Most owners find it is higher than they thought.
The moment you sell rooms on your own site as well as a big site, you need a channel manager. That is one screen holding your rooms across every site. Without it you will sell room 4 twice in August, when there is nowhere on the island to move anybody to.
Very little, honestly. It writes and translates room descriptions.
The money here comes from joining things up, not from the AI.
The price, and the reply to the guest who emails asking whether there is a cot.
Classified tourist accommodation must show its MHTE registration number on every listing, advert and page of its own website. A short term let registered with AADE must show its AMA number on every listing, on every platform. The fines rise in steps: EUR 5,000, then EUR 10,000, then EUR 20,000.
From May 2026 the platforms themselves have to verify that number and remove listings that do not validate. The climate crisis resilience fee is charged per night, per room or unit, not per person. You collect it when the guest leaves. You declare it to the tax authority by the last day of the following month. So your booking page has to show it as its own line.
Finally, a Booking.com commission invoice comes from a Dutch company, not a Greek one. Show it to your accountant. It counts as a service bought from another EU country, under what is called the reverse charge rule.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments
Worth exactly nothing if you only sell on one site, and essential the day you sell on two. A double booking on Booking.com in August means moving a guest at your own cost, when the island is full. Booking.com also pushes you down its list.
Sirvoy is free for one room, and Sirvoy Pro starts around EUR 41 a month with the channel manager included. Beds24 starts at EUR 15.90 a month plus EUR 0.55 per channel link.
Little Hotelier Basics is around $39 a month plus a 1% booking fee. The Greek option, WebHotelier, does not publish its prices.
Count your sales channels. If the answer is one, do not buy this. The Booking.com screen you already log into does the job.
If the answer is two or more, get quotes from two suppliers this week.
Three very different things get sold as 'it integrates'. A calendar link (iCal) is free but only refreshes every few hours, which is fine for two rooms and dangerous for twelve.
A live connection updates in seconds. 'We can export a spreadsheet' is not a connection at all.
Ask which one you are buying, before you sign.
Nothing. Not every useful thing is AI.
The overbooking decision, and the phone call when it goes wrong anyway.
Who it is for: Boat trip or excursion
GetYourGuide takes 25% to 30% and Viator 20% to 25%, which sounds brutal until you look at the prices. A Skiathos round island trip sells at EUR 20 to EUR 35 on the harbour, and from about $55 on GetYourGuide.
After a 30% cut you still net roughly EUR 38 to EUR 41 a seat, which is more than the kiosk gets you.
GetYourGuide 25% to 30% commission, Viator 20% to 25%. For your own direct bookings, CaptainBook is EUR 49 a month with 0% on direct bookings.
Bokun is $49 a month plus 1.5%. FareHarbor charges no monthly fee but adds about 6% to what your customer sees at checkout, so a EUR 100 trip shows as EUR 106.
Set your platform price higher than your harbour price before you list anything at all. This is the whole decision, and it is made once.
Listing at your walk-up price. At EUR 25 minus 30% you net EUR 17.50 for exactly the same day's work.
Writes the listing text and translates it into the languages your passengers actually read.
The decision to sail. The weather, and the meltemi, are not a machine's call.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments
Honestly, not much here yet. It runs at $399 to $600 a month, it is built English first, and a Skiathos phone rings in four languages over a busy service.
A hotel with a year round front desk might test it. Nobody else on this island should be paying for it this season.
$399 to $600 a month, the reported range for AI phone answering services. Treat it as a range.
Do the free version first. Record a two line voicemail in Greek and English that says when you answer the phone and gives your WhatsApp number.
That solves most of the same problem for nothing.
The demo is always a clean call in American English. Test it on a Friday in August, with a Greek surname and a bad line, before you commit to a season.
Answers the call, takes a name and a number, and books simple things.
Every call that matters. A missed booking is recoverable.
An angry guest handled badly by a machine is not.
If it talks to people, the EU AI Act transparency rule applies, in force since 2 August 2026. Say it is AI at the start, unless that is obvious.
Who it is for: Taverna or restaurant · Beach bar or canteen · Hotel, rooms or apartments · Shop
It is the cheapest list you will ever build, and also the fastest way to build an illegal one. Done properly it gives you a list of people who have genuinely been in your place.
Beambox is from GBP 29 a month per venue billed yearly, rising to GBP 45 and GBP 60 for the bigger plans. Spotipo is $59 a month, or $49 a month billed annually at $590 a year, for up to 2,000 guests a month.
Writing your own privacy notice and consent wording costs nothing but an afternoon. There is no fee to pay either, because in Greece you do not have to register with anyone before you start.
Open your own sign-in page on your phone. If the marketing box is already ticked, or the WiFi will not connect until you tick it, that is the thing to fix this week.
Every address collected the wrong way is unusable, and it takes the rest of the list with it. You cannot fix it afterwards by asking again nicely.
Almost nothing, and that is the point. This is about asking permission properly, not about software.
The wording on the page, and the record of who agreed to what. If you cannot prove consent, the law treats you as not having it.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
Ten years of repeat customers, kept somewhere that survives a phone going in the sea and a member of staff leaving in September.
Free to start. MailerLite is free up to 250 people on your list and 2,500 emails a month, then from $12 a month.
Tableo's free plan and Sirvoy's free plan both keep the guest record for you as part of the booking.
Open a free MailerLite account and add last season's booking emails. Only the people who actually booked, and who were told at the time they might hear from you.
Do not load in an old list when you cannot show those people agreed. An old spreadsheet of addresses is not a mailing list. If you cannot show they agreed, you cannot use it.
Tidies a messy spreadsheet of names and addresses, and takes out the ones listed twice.
The decision about who genuinely agreed. AI cannot manufacture a consent that never happened, and it will not warn you that it is trying.
For each person you must be able to show when they agreed and what they were told (GDPR Article 7(1)). Keep that record for as long as you use the list. Keep a separate note of anybody who asked you to stop, with the date.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
It costs nothing to send to 250 people, and every one of them has already paid you once. We have no figure for what comes back, and will not invent one.
Free up to 250 people on your list and 2,500 emails a month with MailerLite, then from $12 a month.
Write the email you would want to receive. Ask AI to tighten it, not to write it.
Send it to yourself first, and read it on a phone.
One email a season is welcome. One a week is how you lose the list, and how you get reported.
Tightens your draft, shortens it, and translates it for the guests who need it in another language.
The news itself. The only thing anybody wants to read is what has genuinely changed since last year.
Every message needs a free, easy way to unsubscribe, your name clearly on it and a working address (Law 3471/2006, Article 11(4)). Stopping must be as easy as starting (GDPR Article 7(3)), and you must act on it straight away and keep a note of the date.
Greece does let you email past customers without asking first, but the exception is narrow. It has to be somebody who actually bought from you. It has to be for similar things. And they must have had an easy way to say no, when you took the address and in every message since.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments · Boat trip or excursion · Car, bike or scooter hire
These are people who already asked you for a price, so it is the warmest list you have. Most small places never follow up even once.
Free if you do it by hand out of your own inbox. A tool only starts to help when there are more of them than you can hold in your head.
Go back through a month of enquiries, find the five you never heard back from, and send five short personal messages. Do that once before you buy anything.
On WhatsApp the free reply window closes 24 hours after their last message, and it restarts every time they write again. Once it is shut you can only send a message Meta approved in advance. Approval takes up to 24 hours, so write it before you need it.
Drafts the follow-up in their language, and keeps track of who has gone quiet.
The sending. Two nudges is a follow-up, five is harassment, and only a person can feel where the line is.
Answering somebody who contacted you is fine. Turning that enquiry into a marketing list is a different thing and needs consent under Law 3471/2006, Article 11(1).
Manual phone calls follow a different rule again: no prior consent needed, but you must check the national do-not-call registers first.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments · Boat trip or excursion · Car, bike or scooter hire
You pay Meta's normal advertising cost for the click, and then every message you send that person for the next 72 hours is free. For a business with no website, the chat is the website.
Your advertising budget, whatever you cap it at, plus nothing for the messaging in the 72 hour window after the tap. That free window is Meta's own published rule, not a promotion.
Pick the one quiet week you actually want to fill. Set a small daily cap, run it for that week only, and write down what you spent and what came back.
Advertising is the easiest way there is to spend money with nothing to show for it. Set the daily cap before you write the ad, not after you see the first results.
Writes several versions of the ad text and translates them, so you are choosing between options instead of staring at an empty box.
The budget cap, and the decision to stop. A machine will happily keep spending.
If an automatic assistant answers those chats, say so at the start. That is EU AI Act Article 50, in force since 2 August 2026.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
A discount in August costs you money on covers you would have sold anyway. The same discount in the middle of May buys covers that did not otherwise exist.
Nothing to send, if you already have a list and WhatsApp. The only cost is the discount itself, which is why you decide that number first.
Pick the single week next season you most want to fill, and write down what filling it is worth to you. That number is your offer, and you now stop arguing with yourself about it.
Never discount the busiest fortnight. The two weeks up to 15 August are the most expensive stretch of the Greek year. People pay the full price without being asked twice.
Drafts the offer, translates it, and writes the short version for WhatsApp.
The price. Nobody but you knows what a table in the middle of May is actually worth.
An offer sent by email or text is marketing. It needs consent. The one exception in Greece is narrow. It covers people who have genuinely bought from you, for similar things, with an easy way to stop in every message.
Who it is for: Hotel, rooms or apartments
This is one of the few AI uses on this page with a genuine track record. It matters most in the weeks either side of peak, where one flat price either leaves rooms empty or sells them too cheap.
PriceLabs is $19.99 per listing per month, or 1% of revenue.
Before you buy anything, write down last season's occupancy week by week. If you were full for eleven weeks and half empty for nine, you already know where the money is hiding.
Automatic pricing on a 12 room property can price you out of your own repeat guests. Set a floor and a ceiling, and check it weekly for the first month.
Reads demand and suggests a price per night, one room type at a time.
The floor price, and the regulars. A machine does not know about the family that has come every June since 2011.
Who it is for: Taverna or restaurant · Beach bar or canteen · Hotel, rooms or apartments
Waste is money you have already spent. Only your own bins and your own order sheets can tell you what that number is. That is exactly why it is worth looking.
Nobody publishes a price for this, and you probably do not need one. It can be done with the sales report your till already gives you, and an AI assistant you already use. Start there before buying anything.
For two weeks, write one line a day of what you threw away. Two weeks of that beats any software you could buy this month.
The forecast is only as good as the till behind it. If half your sales go through as 'misc food', the machine has nothing to work with. Fixing your till buttons is the real first job.
Reads the numbers you already have and points at the pattern. It will notice that Fridays are different, because that is when the charter flights land.
The order. The market, the weather and the fish are not in the spreadsheet.
Who it is for: Taverna or restaurant · Beach bar or canteen · Hotel, rooms or apartments · Shop
You already own the data. It is sitting in your till, and most places never get a quiet enough month to read it.
Nobody publishes a price. Your till may already print a sales report at no extra cost, so ask your till supplier before you buy anything new.
Email whoever supplies your till and ask for last season's sales by item, as a spreadsheet. That one email is this week's job.
Do not upload anything with customer names or card details in it. Strip it down to items, quantities and prices first.
Reads a messy spreadsheet and tells you in a sentence what sells, what does not, and what changed since last year.
The menu decision. Some dishes stay because they are the reason people come, whatever the numbers say about them.
If the file carries names or contact details, that is personal data. Only what you actually need should be in it (GDPR Article 5(1)(c)). Take the names out before it leaves your building.
Who it is for: every kind of business here
It replaces the report nobody ever had time to build. The answer comes back in a minute, in whatever language you asked the question in.
Nobody publishes a price for the Greek market. You need no new software, only an AI assistant and the file you already have.
Take one spreadsheet you already own and ask it three questions you would otherwise ask an accountant. 'Which month was my worst, and by how much' is a fine place to start.
It answers just as confidently when it is wrong. Check any number you are going to act on against the original file, yourself.
Reads the file, does the arithmetic, and answers in plain words instead of a chart nobody asked for.
The judgement. It can tell you May was down.
It cannot tell you it rained for nine days.
Take out names, phone numbers and card details before you upload anything. If a supplier or a tool handles your customers' data, you are still the one answerable for it, not them.
They are here, not hidden. The line is not always where you would expect it, and plenty of people here run two things at once.
The same 22 jobs, sorted by what leaves your bank account.
Each price here is the short version. The full one is inside the job
Nothing to pay, now or later. If you only ever do this column, you have done most of the good on this page.
7 of 22
Nothing new to buy today. Three of these sit on a free plan that runs out once you grow. The other three need no software at all, only the file you already have.
6 of 22
A supplier, a bill and a decision. Do not start here. Come back to this column when one of the free jobs has stopped being enough.
9 of 22
Four of the 22 say the price is not known. That is not a dodge. Those suppliers do not publish a price for a Greek business, so this page will not make one up on their behalf. Ask two of them for a quote and compare.
Short on purpose. Four rules cover almost everything a small business here does with a customer's details, and none of them are hard.
A marketing message needs the person to say yes first. That yes is what the law calls consent. It is Greek law, Law 3471/2006, Article 11(1), and Meta's own WhatsApp rules say the same.
Answering somebody who messaged you first is fine and always was. Turning that enquiry into a mailing list is the different thing.
A yes does not count if the service will not work without it. That is GDPR Article 7(4), and it is the rule most WiFi sign-in pages get wrong.
The box must be empty when the page loads. Pre-ticked does not count. Show the privacy notice before they type anything, which is Article 13.
Keep a record of who ticked, when, and what the box said. Under Article 7(1) you are the one who has to prove it.
Your name on it, a working address, and a free way to stop. That is Article 11(4) of the same Greek law.
Stopping has to be as easy as starting, which is GDPR Article 7(3). Act on it straight away and write down the date.
Since 2 August 2026 the EU AI Act, Article 50, applies. Tell people at the first message that they are talking to AI, unless that is obvious.
Meta's rules add one more: there must be a way to hand the conversation to a real person.
Classified tourist accommodation shows its MHTE number on every listing, every advert and every page of its own website. A short term let registered with AADE shows its AMA number on every listing, on every platform.
From May 2026 the platforms themselves have to check that number and take down listings that do not validate.
It is charged per night, per room or unit. You collect it when the guest leaves, and you declare it to the tax authority by the last day of the following month.
So it has to appear as its own line on your booking page, not folded into the room price.
This is a plain reading of published rules, not legal advice, and it is written to be cautious where the law is unsettled. If money is riding on it, ask your accountant.
The same three from the top of the page, written as things to actually do. None of them cost anything and none of them need anybody's permission.
Send a message and we will talk it through. Which one is worth your afternoon, which to ignore this season, and what a thing you have been sold actually does. Free, and there is no catch.
A message is the whole mechanism. No form, no account and no email address to hand over anywhere on this site. Answers are in English, and in August they may take a day or two.