Casting my mind
back three decades I place myself in the offices of Hellenic Tours. It’s
spring 1976 and I can see me taking my first steps in tourism, a field as diverse
as it is interesting. In 1981 and at about the same time I set out, Mrs.
Olga Dimopoulou sets up her own office organizing mostly scientific
conferences. A decade later, our parallel tracks converge at the same
junction. It is there that, once again, we become aware of the mutual
respect for each other. In 1993, the two of us join forces with Mr
Aristeidis Tsaldaris and, not long afterwards, Erasmus Horizon Ltd is born with
congress tourism as its main objective.
Our first set of offices belonged to the Horizon company and soon we were able
to welcome in our midst one of our most dynamic cooperators, Penelope
Mitroyianni. A few months later, in 1994, there were five of us and our
company was given a home at the offices of Mrs. Dimopoulou. But not for
long: Our staff had grown to the point that moving to our own separate
office space seemed to be the only solution. And move we did to a
beautiful set of offices on Vasileos Georgiou Avenue where we continued on our
successful course welcoming a new member, Anthi Vaseiliadou, the best person
anyone could wish for to handle the finance end of our business.
Nevertheless, our stay there was short-lived: three years later we parted ways
with Mr. Tsaldaris and, since such changes within are tantamount to changes
without, we transferred to new offices on Deinokratous Street, establishing our
business as Erasmus Ltd. By then, our staff had increased to 17 members
and prospects looked particularly auspicious.
The years that follow are brimful of memories. The new millennium finds
us with our own accounting department headed by Nektaria Romanou and in the
process of converting our company to a Societé Anonyme (SA). In 2001,
together with Ms. Nelli Koulouri and Ms Ifighenia Tambaki we found AirMaritime
Erasmus Ltd in Thessaloniki.
At the beginning
of the following year, "Naftemporiki”, the prestigious financial newspaper
owned by the brothers Athanassiadis, shows up on our doorstep and becomes our
company’s third major stockholder. On December 17, 2002 and instead of
engaging in the traditional exchanging of Christmas gifts, we give ourselves
the gift of privately-owned offices in the Hilton Hotel area, at one of the
most central spots of downtown Athens.
In the years that follow, Erasmus acquires a cluster of 25 permanent
cooperators and assumes the reins of leadership in the field of conference
organizing where the high standards and highly specialized nature of our
services are corroborated by the frequency of cooperation with our regular
clients, by the trust our important clients bestow on us, and by the breadth
and width of our activities. Our crowning moment comes in October 2006
with the organization of the 15th Congress of EADV on the captivating island of
Rhodes, with the congress playing host to over 12,000 participants and 130
exhibitors. Not long after that, we are amply rewarded in the form of the
prestigious ISO-9001 certification for the high quality of our services.
In 2009, a landmark year for our company, for the first time we organized a
Conference abroad, the 2nd International Workshop on Focal Therapy and Imaging
in Prostate and Kidney Cancer, in Noordwijk, Amsterdam, with great success.
Ever since our list of conferences organized abroad is ever growing with an
average of 10 projects annually being organized by ERASMUS outside the Greek
borders.
In 2013 “KYVERNITIS TRAVEL S.A.”, one of the strongest travel agencies in
Greece, takes the place of “H NAFTEMPORIKI” as the third partner of ERASMUS
S.A.
9 years later, in
2022, having come out of the coronavirus pandemic crisis with steely strength
and determination, we make one bolder step and buy 100% of the company share.
Today, Erasmus Conferences & Events is purely a professional congress
organizing company, owned 100% by Georgia Tsatsou, who carries more than 40
years of personal professional experience in the sector and leads by example a
team of 25, handling an average of 50 projects a year and doing what we do
best: organizing and supporting conferences, events and travel related services
from Alexandroupolis to Crete and from London to Cape Town, with a vision that
is crystal-clear and brimming with optimism.
Georgia Tsatsou
Οwner & CEO
