IN a crowded alleyway at the foot of the Acropolis, the Adrianos travel agency is uncharacteristically empty.

    Manos Georgakarakos has owned the business for 42 years. This is the worst year he can remember.

    “Normally at this time of the year we are packed, we have tourists queuing out the door. But I would say tourist numbers are now 50 percent down. Last minute bookings are 30 percent down,” he says.

    The timing couldn’t be much worse. Greece is locked in desperate negotiations with its international creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the countries of the eurozone. Unless a last-minute deal to provide urgently needed money can be hammered out at an emergency meeting of all 28 European Union leaders in Brussels on Sunday, the country is likely to go bankrupt and crash out of the eurozone.

    And the ripples from those negotiations, combined with a six-year recession made worse by austerity, are hobbling Greece’s critical tourism industry just as the income it generates is most needed by Greeks.

    “This will finish Greece,” said Georgakarakos. “We have only tourism — nothing else. And it’s happening in July, right in the middle of the season.”

    Tourism is the life blood of the Greek economy. If it dries up, the already grim economic crisis will worsen. More than 17 percent of Greece’s GDP depends on tourism, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council, with around 350,000 Greeks directly employed in the sector.

    There has been a sharp reduction in bookings since yesterday, when Greece held a referendum on whether to swallow more austerity in return for another bailout.

    “Since the announcement of the referendum and the imposition of capital controls, we have seen a 30 percent drop in last-minute bookings,” said Xenophon Petropoulos, communications manager for the Association of Greek Tourism Enterprises.

    “An immediate and sustainable agreement with our European partners needs to be reached so that the positive image of our country abroad can be restored and the economy — with an emphasis on the Greek tourism sector — returns to normal.”

    Tourists have been spooked by dire warnings of shuttered banks, difficulties paying with credit cards and the specter of civil unrest.(SD-Agencies)