PRESIDENT Tassos Papadopoulos yesterday unveiled plans to increase annual tourism revenue to 1.8 billion and arrivals to 3.5 million by 2010. The new vision is a revised version of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation’s (CTO) strategic plan, but with a new emphasis on implementation.
The 2003-2010 plan for tourism was yesterday unanimously approved at a meeting of all partners in the tourism sector.
It replaces the original 2000-2010 strategic plan, over which the CTO and government were widely criticised for their failure to implement its provisions for the past three years.
Unlike the original, which foresaw arrivals increasing to four million, the new plan places more emphasis on increasing revenue through quality rather than quantity.
After yesterday’s meeting, senior CTO official Lefkos Phylactides told the Cyprus Mail that the plan was “a clear guideline and blueprint for the way forward”.
“The new element is the commitment and clear procedure for the implementation of the plan,” he said. “Now there are safeguards to ensure that the plan will be implemented.”
Papadopoulos told a news conference the critical factor for maximising revenue was for the approach to change, for the emphasis on more arrivals to give way to maximising income.
The government aims to achieve this by a rise in per capita tourist expenditure, the improvement of seasonality, an increase in the length of stay, and more repeat tourism.
Tourism, which accounts for some 20 per cent of GDP, has been declining since 2000, when there were 2.68 million arrivals and when revenue reached ,1.2 billion for the first time.
Numbers had been expected to rocket 15 per cent in 2001, but what started out as a bumper year saw only a marginal 0.39 per cent increase in arrivals following the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
In 2002, the industry was plagued by fallout from 9/11, which hit the global airline industry, and by new talk of war with Iraq. The year ended with tourism ten per cent down at 2.4 million arrivals, and the sector entered 2003 with the threat of an Iraqi war becoming reality. This year is expected to end close to or slightly down on last year.
Statistics complied in the UK, however, show that bookings were already on the way down before 2001, with many warning that Cyprus was pricing itself out of the market, suggesting a deeper root cause to the current woes and prompting the push for a more integrated tourism policy.
Papadopoulos has now appointed a ministerial committee to oversee implementation of the modified plan. The committee will meet every four months and report to the Cabinet on progress in various areas, he said.
He called the plan a “tourism road map” which also aimed to ensure the economy was no longer dependent on tourism, but without diminishing its importance.
“We are committed to implementing this plan within the set deadlines,” Papadopoulos said.
Speaking for the private sector, Louis marketing manager George Michaelides, who is also a spokesman for cultural tourism, said: “I think we are cruising into new developments in which I believe for the first time there is a very serious commitment to implementing them.”
