DELEGATE EXPERIENCE GUIDE
Programme & Athens Experience · 14–17 October 2026
Dear delegates, it is our great pleasure to welcome you to Athens.
This guide walks you through your four days in the city — the professional programme alongside the culture, gastronomy and warm hospitality that surround it. Day by day, you'll find the schedule, the places you'll visit and a glimpse of what awaits, so you can arrive with everything already in view.
With warm regards, the GPMA team & your EAPM hosts
Step into one of the world's finest modern museums, at the very foot of the Sacred Rock. Glass floors reveal the ancient city beneath you, and the top-floor gallery frames the Parthenon itself. A guide will be with us throughout, so the collection comes with its story attached.
Our first evening together, in one of the most storied gardens in the city. Black Duck Garden sits in the courtyard of the Museum of the City of Athens, the 1833 mansion that briefly served as the first royal residence of modern Greece — a leafy hideaway on Klafthmonos Square, where a palm planted by Queen Amalia still stands. Seasonal Mediterranean cooking built on produce from small Greek growers, and the first real chance to meet your fellow delegates.
Address: I. Paparrigopoulou 5–7, 10561 Athens (Klafthmonos Square) · Open in Google Maps
Good to know: comfortable shoes make the museum a pleasure. October evenings stay mild — a light layer is all you'll need.
A full working day bringing together HR leaders from across Europe to exchange ideas, share national perspectives and shape the future of the profession.
As dusk falls, a forty-minute panoramic drive through the historic centre, with the city's landmarks lighting up one by one — the most atmospheric hour to see Athens.
The coach sets us down and we continue on foot through the old town, arriving at the restaurant the way the city is best approached — slowly, and at street level.
Dinner at the celebrated Dionysos restaurant, set directly across from the Acropolis — fine dining with the most famous view in the world.
Good to know: the coach leaves the Royal Olympic Hotel at 18:00. The last stretch to dinner is on foot, so comfortable shoes are worth it — and smart attire is perfect for the evening at Dionysos.
A morning of dialogue on one of the most pressing themes for the future of work, hosted in the newly renovated National Gallery — where art and ideas meet.
In the afternoon we sail out across the Saronic Gulf to the island of Aegina, one of the closest of the Greek islands and, in October, one of the quietest. Sea air, a golden light on the way back, and hours of conversation far beyond the conference halls.
Boarding: the boat Grande Boundy, at Alimos Marina (Marina Alimou) · Open in Google Maps
The cruise is kindly offered by OceansCaptain.
A 40-minute experiential wellness session to pause, recharge and reconnect, with tools that can be carried into everyday life.
Through gentle movement, fascia release techniques, breathwork, self-awareness practices and a brief exploration of the mind–body connection, participants will be guided to ease physical tension and become more present in their body, breath and the moment.
The session also introduces accessible stretches and wellbeing practices that can be easily incorporated into the workplace.
Vasiliki Efraimoglou
Mentor Coach, NLP Master Practitioner, Yoga & Meditation Teacher
Vasiliki Efraimoglou is an Energy Mentor Coach, Yoga & Meditation Teacher, NLP Master Practitioner and Conscious Movement Facilitator. Her work brings together movement, breath, meditation, self-inquiry and the study of consciousness to help people reconnect with themselves and create meaningful, sustainable change.
With a background in psychology, criminology and law, she brings a multidisciplinary approach to human development, teaching both the theory and lived experience of personal transformation. Through energy coaching, holistic, immersive retreats, workshops and experiential events, she combines practical tools and deeper teachings with movement, nature, creativity and human connection.
Her approach is grounded in the belief that wellbeing is not about escaping everyday life but about becoming more conscious of how we think, feel, behave and interact with others.
Good to know: the coach leaves the Royal Olympic Hotel at 08:50 for the conference, and at 14:00 it takes us on directly from the National Gallery to Alimos Marina, where we board the Grande Boundy. If you are making your own way, meet us at the boat by 14:30. A light jacket is recommended for the breeze at sea — and Aegina is famous for its pistachios, so bring a little cash for the harbour stalls.
A neoclassical mansion overlooking the National Garden, holding one of the richest collections of Greek culture — from antiquity through Byzantium to the modern era, all under one elegant roof. A final, unhurried encounter with the story of the country that hosted you. Admission is covered by GPMA.
We close the guide as we began it — together, over good food and easy conversation, until we meet again.
THE PROGRAMME
Two conferences sit at the centre of these four days. Both are published in full on the event site, and kept current there as speakers are confirmed.
The annual working session of the European Association for People Management, bringing together the delegates of its member associations to review the year, set shared priorities and shape what comes next for the profession across Europe.
An open conference on the theme that has moved to the top of every European HR agenda: how the Pay Transparency Directive is being turned into national law, and what that means in practice for pay structures, reporting and the conversations managers now have to hold.
Your place is already reserved. We register every delegate for the conference automatically, and there is no participation fee — GPMA covers the registration.
If you would rather not join us on Friday morning, just let us know at info@gpma.gr and we will take care of it.
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MEETING POINT & TRANSFERS
Almost every transfer leaves from the same spot, so there is barely an address to remember.
YOUR MEETING POINT
Royal Olympic Hotel
Departures leave from the hotel lobby, with one exception: on Friday afternoon the coach carries on straight from the National Gallery to Alimos Marina. Please be there ten minutes before the time shown below. A member of the GPMA team will be waiting with a sign, and we will not leave without you — but the coach and the boat both have slots to keep.
WHERE EVERYTHING IS
Every venue in this guide sits within a short walk or a five-minute taxi ride of the next.
GETTING HERE & GETTING AROUND
Athens International Airport (ATH) sits about 35 km east of the centre. Three easy ways in.
Direct from the airport to Syntagma, in the heart of the city, in about 40 minutes. Trains run roughly every 30 minutes, from early morning until around midnight. The station is one floor above Arrivals.
€9 single · €16 returnOfficial yellow taxis charge a flat rate to any central address — no meter, no negotiation. Join the supervised rank outside Arrivals. The apps FREENOW and Uber also operate in Athens.
€50 daytime · €65 after midnightRuns 24 hours a day to Syntagma Square, which makes it the reliable choice for very late or very early arrivals. Slower than the metro when traffic is heavy — allow around an hour.
€5.50The historic centre is compact and best explored on foot. For everything else, the metro is quick and inexpensive, and you can tap a contactless card or phone straight at the gates.
Contactless acceptedHOURS, TICKETS AND WHAT NOT TO MISS
You will see all three with us. Should you want to return on your own, here is what you need to know.
Don't miss — the Caryatids on the first floor, standing free of their railings, and the top-floor Parthenon Gallery, where the frieze is laid out at the exact orientation of the temple you can see through the glass.
Don't miss — the carved wooden reception rooms lifted from 18th-century Macedonian mansions and rebuilt inside the museum, and the third-floor galleries tracing modern Greece from the Revolution to the Second World War.
Don't miss — the El Greco room, and the nineteenth-century Greek painting galleries, where a young nation is busy inventing how it wants to picture itself.
WHEN YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN
Rather than send everyone to the same table, here are the districts worth heading for. Each has dozens of good options, and no reservation is usually needed before 21:00. The last three are by the sea and need a taxi — worth it on a warm evening.
Directly around the Acropolis Museum. Quiet residential streets with neighbourhood tavernas and a new generation of small bistros. The most convenient option if you are staying nearby.
The historic heart, and unashamedly touristic — but the rooftop terraces here have the Acropolis view, and one evening among the lanes is part of the experience.
A district of former workshops that turned into the liveliest quarter in the city. Mezedopoleia, wine bars and late tables, packed with Athenians rather than visitors.
Around the Benaki Museum. The polished side of Athens: pavement cafés, considered cooking and the city's best people-watching, on the slopes below Lycabettus.
A small horseshoe harbour in Piraeus, lined end to end with fish tavernas whose tables stop where the moored boats begin. The classic Athenian seafood evening, about half an hour by taxi.
On the coastal road at Palaio Faliro, where the city first meets the water. Seafront tavernas and bars with the marina in front of you — the nearest of the seaside options, and the easiest to reach.
Twenty-five minutes by taxi to Glyfada or Vouliagmeni, for fish eaten beside the water. Worth the trip on a warm evening, and best booked ahead.
IF YOU HAVE AN EXTRA HOUR — OR AN EXTRA DAY
A few suggestions, should you arrive early, find a free morning, or stay on after Saturday.
Five minutes from the Royal Olympic, and quite possibly the view from your conference window. Fifteen enormous columns are all that remain of the largest temple in Greece, seven hundred years in the building.
Ten minutes from Syntagma. The marble stadium of the first modern Olympics in 1896, rebuilt on the ancient foundations — you can walk out onto the track itself and sit in the emperor's throne.
Free, unfenced and twenty minutes on foot from the Acropolis. Athenians come here for the finest view of the Parthenon there is; visitors almost never find it.
The oldest quarter of the city, wrapped around the north slope of the Acropolis. Anafiotika, at the very top, is a pocket of whitewashed island houses that feels nothing like a capital.
A short funicular ride from Kolonaki lifts you to the highest point in the city. Best at sunset, when the whole basin turns gold and the Acropolis sits below you.
Two hundred metres from the Benaki. Small, beautifully lit, and home to the pale marble figurines whose severe simplicity startled Picasso and Modigliani four thousand years later.
The Agora is where Socrates argued and the Stoics taught. Above it, on the Pnyx, the Assembly of Athens met to debate and vote — for a gathering of delegates from across Europe, it is worth standing where the whole idea of an assembly began.
The most important museum in the country, and the one nobody should leave Athens without: the gold mask from Mycenae, the bronze Poseidon, and the Antikythera mechanism, a geared computer built two thousand years too early.
Renzo Piano's park, opera house and library by the sea. Contemporary Athens at its most confident — and the rooftop view over the Saronic Gulf is worth the trip alone.
An hour and a half down the coast stands the Temple of Poseidon, on a cliff above the Aegean. If you have a free afternoon and want one unforgettable image, this is it.
FIVE WORDS THAT GO A LONG WAY
Nobody expects it — which is exactly why it always lands well.
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