Tourism staggers but officials still hope

Deputy Minister for Tourism Savvas Perdios said that 2019 is a difficult year for tourism, but stressed that there is no need for panic, pointing out that positive developments may be expected in the coming weeks with regard to covering the losses from flights that no longer operate to and from the Republic of Cyprus.

This year is a more difficult one, Perdios told the press in Paphos, noting that this was natural after three successive years of record arrivals.

“It is natural that there is a downswing especially during a period when competition with Turkey, Egypt, Tunis and Morocco keeps growing”, he said, adding however that there was no need to panic. “We continue working on reintroducing some of the flights that we lost over the last months. More news is expected in the next weeks”.

This, according to Perdios, would help to improve the situation next year. He said that Cyprus should target other sources of tourism than traditional markets such as the UK and Russia where the serious competition facing Cyprus was evident.

The Deputy Ministry, he noted, has taken every possible action to attract new airlines or new flights.

The Deputy Minister said that they were expecting the final results of the open tender for the new branding to begin a very big campaign aiming to promote Cyprus abroad as a tourist destination but in a different way, in the next two years.

Perdios also said that the Deputy Ministry was preparing to announce its business plan soon and the national strategy for tourism that would include a ten-year plan with all the actions that have to be taken.

He noted that in the next two years they would make a big effort not only to attract new investments and tourists from new markets, but also to upgrade Cyprus’ tourism product and those areas that are necessary to further develop tourism.

The ultimate goal of the Deputy Ministry, said Perdios, is to extend the island`s tourism season and noted that this was very important and that is the reason why the Deputy Ministry insists on devising a ten-year plan.

Cyprus needs a strategic plan, he noted, adding that “the Deputy Ministry stands in favor of such a plan, it has been working on it and surely bit by bit Cyprus has all the tools to achieve the goal of extending tourism season”.