By Anthony O. Miller
STAGING the Miss Universe 2000 Pageant in Cyprus is just one arrow in the quiver of Commerce Minister Nicos Rolandis, who said yesterday that Cyprus was taking special aim in targeting America as a source of tourists and business investment for Cyprus.
“What we have in mind about the millennium is directed to a great extent to the US market. We are targeting the US market, which is a very important market,” Rolandis said.
“We are trying to increase American tourism (but) we get a very small percentage” of the 11 million Americans expected to visit Europe this year, he said.
Of these, “some 2 million visit the Middle East” – Israel, Egypt and elsewhere. He wants “to get those who are travelling to the Eastern Mediterranean” to visit Cyprus, he said.
To do this, Rolandis said, he is working on tourist packages and even direct flights from the United States to Cyprus – though this last effort has produced “no results so far,” he added.
The campaign includes staging the Miss Universe 2000 Pageant in Cyprus: “It will place us on the tourist map of the US, because the advertising value of the this event in the US, according to CBS estimates, is $280 million,” Rolandis said.
That is how much it would cost “to buy this advertising time for Cyprus, in addition to other indirect benefits.”
Rolandis and US Ambassador Kenneth Brill yesterday discussed not only grabbing a share of the US tourism market, but the larger picture of Cyprus as an Eastern Mediterranean hub for US high-tech companies.
US-Cyprus sectors they discussed included medicine, solar and environmental technologies, telecommunications, computer hardware and software, and agro- industries, Rolandis said.
But their talks yesterday were constrained – “we are at the very beginning of discussing this subject” – by the fact the Council of Ministers has not yet reviewed his Ministry’s 60-page, 12-volume, industrial policy statement.
It took him, “personally,” and 10 of his top experts five months to compile, he said. He said the policy statement would “open a new industrial era in Cyprus, including high-technology.” It will be discussed by ministers later this month.
“So, before I have the decision of the Council of Ministers on the new industrial policy… I cannot be very specific,” Rolandis said.
Despite this, “we exchanged some very useful matters on this with Kenneth Brill” yesterday about trade, industry and investments, he said, adding “trade relations are quite good” with the United States. They continue to be good.”
Besides trade with America, Rolandis said Cyprus expected to improve trade ties with Russia, Israel and the European Union. “We are targeting a number of markets for this co-operation.”
Rolandis said he met last week with a Miss Universe 2000 Pageant vice- president, discussed details, and the woman and her organising committee were “pleased with Cyprus.”
“They were (also) puzzled with what they saw in Cyprus. They never anticipated seeing such a developed country in this part of the world. They liked it very much,” he said.
While the pageant is traditionally staged in “the Americas,” Rolandis said, its organisers “now feel that they could move outside the US.”
“By selecting Cyprus, and also giving the connection of the Year 2000, the millennium, with the country where ‘the first Miss Universe ever’ was elected 800 years before Christ… there is a special connection between a beauty contest of this magnitude, and Aphrodite,” he said.
