Varosha hotel reservations in a virtual world

Reports on Tuesday that the businessman who aims to rent out hotels in occupied Varosha by 2025 – with dubious chances of success, at best – got even stranger: reservations can be made in a 3D virtual world.

Once the user passes through the antiquated looking login page, they’re directed to choose an avatar with which 3D sections of the anticipated hotels can be toured, along with sections of the Varosha beachfront.

Smooth jazz tinkles through the headphones as the avatar enters the world and is dropped in the large room of a hotel – the Cleo Hotel, one of the four which the businessman claims to have purchased.

The wooden walls are adorned with large, framed black and white photographs capturing some of the most significant moments of the Republic’s history, such as Archbishop Makarios signing the independence charter.

Nearby screens play footage from Varosha as it was prior to the invasion, its abandonment and subsequent “ghost-town” status – a not so subtle hint to its attraction for some as a macabre museum.

The ephemeral immersion into the surreal setting is broken when the user approaches a nearby screen. Walking up to the green arrow at the screen prompts a task window to open – ‘allowing’ you to book reservations in the hotel for 2025.

Rooms on ‘offer’ are depicted as luxurious, but in reality are likely currently hollowed husks of what they once were after decades of neglect.

But anyway, back to the businessman’s simulation.

A nearby elevator takes the user’s avatar to the ground level where a panoramic view attempts to recreate the golden sands and crystal blue waters of the renowned Varosha beachfront.

But turn around and the user is faced with the Cleo Hotel, or whatever the businessman appears to think it will look like: a pristine and modern building which wouldn’t be out of place in Limassol.

That’s an ambitious, or perhaps fanciful, glimpse at what some are hoping will be available in 2025 – at least according to the businessman’s claims.

But the marketing gimmick is likely just that, or perhaps an additional tool in what some view as an effort to build support for Varosha’s status to be further altered.