Tourism industry showing its resilience amid crises, says Perdios

The fact that tourism appears to be facing some kind of crisis every year in recent times has put the sector on alert and made Cyprus work harder towards diversifying its product, according to deputy tourism minister Savvas Perdios.

Speaking at an event on Tuesday night, Perdios said that the pandemic, coupled with the loss of Russian and Ukrainian tourism this year – around one million visitors in total – had prompted tourism authorities to work to find other solutions.

“No matter how many adverse events there are, we are building resilience,” Perdios said.

“The goal is to come in better than last year and the messages we have received is that all markets will be better than in 2021, with the exception of Russia and Ukraine.”

The minister said that tourism was not just hotels and restaurants.

To get around the setbacks of the last three years, Perdios said Cyprus had added a lot of new products including adventure travel, nature and wine-gastronomy, and other “authentic” Cypriot experiences. “These are solutions that will allow us to ‘breathe’ this year,” he said.

“The most important thing for us is that we see the addition of business categories and this shows the pluralism of companies that exist in Cyprus and are active in tourism.”

Perdios said there was also widespread optimism from everyone in the industry that Cyprus was entering new markets or consolidating markets “that we had, but perhaps we did not pay attention to over the last decade”.

He said that “out of nowhere”, this year there would be 40 flights a week to and from Germany, 20 flights to and from France, while there were none two years ago.

The Scandinavian market will also be better than 2019, a record year for Cyprus with some four million arrivals in total. Perdios also said Switzerland, Austria and Poland were also on the cards this year for increased arrivals.

Domestic tourism also expects a boost, the minister said with special price programmes on offer that will be announced in the coming days. The ministry will be subsidising to the tune of around 20 euros per night for residents.

“Contrary to what many may believe, domestic tourism was for us one of the markets that we included in the National Tourism Strategy,” he said.

Perdios on Tuesday night handed out accolades at the Cyprus Tourism Awards 2021 in Limassol. In total, 42 awards were given out in eight different categories.

“The winners show us all that, no matter what happens, tourism will always find a way to stand on its own two feet whatever the adversities,” he said.