JOHN WOOD, manager of the Le Meridien Spa and Resort in Limassol is leaving Cyprus after 30 years of involvement in the island’s tourist industry.
Wood told the Cyprus Mail yesterday he is transferring to Le Meridien’s Middle East/West Asia division but has not yet been given his precise destination.
“I got an opportunity to work internationally and get little bit more experience in other country in a part of the world I’ve not seen,” he said. “It’s a fabulous opportunity.”
Wood’s career in the Cyprus hotel industry began in April 1970 when he came to the island to manage the Asperia Towers hotel in Famagusta. In 1971 he moved on to the Salamina Towers, which closed on July 22, 1974 shortly before it was bombed by Turkish troops during the invasion.
In 1974, Wood went back to the UK for a year.
“I didn’t enjoy it much but I managed to get Holiday Inns to transfer me to the Caribbean where I spent four and a half years before we got itchy feet and wanted to come back to Cyprus,” he said.
But before he returned to the island finally, Wood spent another 16-18 months in the Middle East and arrived back in Cyprus in March 1981 to open the Sunrise Beach Hotel in Protaras.
In August 1987 he travelled on to Paphos to open the Alexander the Great Hotel which he left October 1995. From there he went on to Le Meridien, his current posting. “I’ve been here five years and one month,” he said.
He was also president of the Hotel Managers Association for four years relinquishing the post in 1999. During his term as president of the association Wood was out always outspoken and direct on the issues of Cyprus tourism and promoting the motto “the customer is king”.
Wood will return to Cyprus one day, he said. “My home is here. I’m just looking to gain some experience and see a bit of the world.”
He suggested that other Cypriot hotel managers should also widen their experience in other countries.
“I think they need to do that. Right now they go and study and come back immediately, one: due to work permit problems abroad and second: mum wants them to come home,” he said. “This is the reality of life and what happens is they come back to Cyprus with only one year experience and start working under managers who did the same thing as them six or seven years ago and there’s noting to pass on.”
Wood will be replaced by his current deputy general manager Andreas Christodoulides who has been at Le Meriden for seven years.
“He knows the hotel inside out and he knows the way I think so I don’t foresee any massive changes,” Wood said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
