Our View: Forget tourism, Cyprus sun now means energy

In Cyprus we like to think that we ‘think big’. We certainly talk big a lot of the time. We were going to be an energy hub, an education hub, a technological hub, none of which have transpired.

Similarly, we talk big about the Cyprus issue and how the EU will supposedly get more involved, and on tourism in terms of the number of arrivals as the ultimate benchmark for success.

Comments in this respect by the deputy tourism minister on Sunday to Phileleftheros on the difficulties in attracting visitors from the Gulf were a bit depressing. Since the loss of Russian arrivals we’ve been travelling around to previously-ignored markets with our begging bowl to make up the numbers. Tourism will always be victim of external circumstances and markets will ebb and flow, making it a constant struggle.

Maybe we need to think, not just big, but bigger. Every country has a combination of things that visitors want, either good food and wine, great scenery or architecture, ancient sites, churches and hiking trails, giant shopping malls or novel attractions. We are not special in that respect. Pursuing niche tourists will always be a lot of work.

What we need is an identity, and all there is to offer is sun and sea, and even that is not unique.  We have no Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower or Pyramids, words that immediately come to mind when the average person thinks of India, France or Egypt.

The late tourism minister Nicos Rolandis to his credit recognised this and tried to ‘think bigger’ with his idea to build a giant Aphrodite. Novel and tacky, and not a good idea certainly, but he was on the right track.

The word that would come to most people’s minds when they think about Cyprus is the word ‘sun’. It used to mean fun, which is where we’re still stuck, but these days more importantly, it means energy.  According to the energy minister, we already have excess RES electricity and Israel wants it.

Someone like Rolandis might ask if it were possible to solve the Cyprus issue, energy and tourism in one fell swoop by creating the ‘world’s biggest solar park’ inside the buffer zone where both sides could benefit? This no-man’s land is 180km long and covers 346 square kilometres. It could be interspersed with greenery, parks, facilities and crossings. The biggest solar park right now in India is 56 square kilometres and is already widely searched on Google.

This could make Cyprus into a real renewable energy hub and exporter of massive amounts of electricity through the interconnector instead of waiting another decade to be a gas hub at a cost of €300m plus another €300m a year in emissions fines, in addition to a never-ending cold war with Turkey over EEZs. The EU seems to have money to throw away and UN can also dig deep.

The answer of course to thinking this big, to cite a recent comment by former British envoy for Cyprus Sir David Hannay, is that in Cyprus “politics always trumps economics.”