The outgoing president of the Hoteliers Association (Pasyxe), Thanos Michaelides, has called for the setting up of a ‘crisis management team’ that would deal with ‘crises’ affecting the tourism industry. Speaking at the Pasyxe AGM on Tuesday, Michaelides said that a plan for safeguarding Cyprus tourism was required.

He envisaged the crisis management team consisting of representatives of the hoteliers, travel agents, airports and the deputy ministry of tourism. In addition, he also suggested the setting up of tourism advisory board so there could be better coordination between the private and public sectors.

The need for a ‘crisis management team’ arose because of the downturn in bookings and increase in cancellations at hotels in the first half of the year as a direct consequence of the US-Israel war on Iran. Cancellations, according to Pasyxe, had increased by 30 per cent during March and April, but why is this being presented as something of a surprise that requires the setting up of a permanent ‘crisis management team’?

Is there any other industry that demands the establishment of a crisis management team when it faces an economic downturn, caused by exogenous factors? Are hoteliers not aware that they operate in a market economy in which things do not always go well for businesses or a particular sector? These things happen and it is the responsibility of each business to take measures that would allow it to cope in unfavourable market conditions.

Unfortunately, the government set a bad precedent by offering to subsidise 50 per cent of the payrolls of hotels that opened in April, supposedly to support them after the outbreak of the war. This was a rash decision, considering the hotels could have recovered after an economically bad month or two. Does the government come to the support of any other business that goes through a difficult period of two or three months? Never and quite rightly so.

The irony is that the brief downturn, that required state support and now the establishment of a ‘crisis management team’, came after a record year for tourism, which boasted 4.5 million arrivals and €3.7 billion revenue generated. Hotels, which experienced record occupancy rates, were perfectly capable of coping with the downturn in early 2026 without support from the taxpayer.

Hoteliers need to stop complaining, because things will not go as well as last year, and refer to the situation as a ‘crisis’ in need of a management team. This is no crisis – it is a brief downturn which the huge majority of hotels are financially robust enough to deal with. We would expect Pasyxe to adopt a positive approach to what is turning out to be nothing more than a minor setback.