There’s a reason our tourism is going down the drain
A lot has been said recently about the state of tourism on the island and most of it, unfortunately, is not very optimistic. Cyprus, beautiful sunny land of Aphrodite, donkeys, potatoes and halloumi, is no longer the it place to be seen in. Apparently, we have tried to outsmart our tourists, treating them like brainless bags of money and failing to offer them a professional service that other countries in the region, such as Greece, Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt, give. Now, we are perceived to be too expensive, rude and bad value for money, our waiters and hotel receptionists are said to be untrained and unsmiling and our beaches dirty and not as good as those in post-communist Bulgaria. In short, we are not a European dream.
“We have an aged hotel product, infrastructure remains defective, internal factors such as rapid increase in beds of every kind, high operating costs, reduced productivity, serious delays and procrastination in promoting and implementing the most basic aspects of the tourism strategy, while ruthless neighbouring competition achieves not only record results but record results in record time,” Akis Vavlitis, the president of the Association of Cyprus Tourism Enterprises (ACTE) told this paper and his definition seems to fit the bill. And all this before even looking at the price of plane tickets, the quality of food on Cyprus Airways flights or the highly suspicious fact that pleasant but unsophisticated Cypriot wines, cheeses and olive oil are almost twice as expensive at Larnaca Duty Free as in Alpha Mega hypermarket (shouldn’t it be the other way round?).
But we shouldn’t be surprised with all of the above, should we? Frankly speaking, we are a small island and if our economy, which has for years relied heavily, both directly and indirectly, on tourism, is supposed to make any real money what better way than to over-price and under-invest while hoping that foreigners will never notice? It is a simple, money-saving and money-making, if somehow short-sighted, strategy and since it has worked in Cyprus for a long time, with a bit of luck it will continue to do so. After all, there are still many nice people around ready to offer excuses and explanations about why certain things in Cyprus are done differently. And if they can understand our difficult situation, so can everybody else…
I haven’t stayed in a Cypriot hotel recently so I am unable to comment on the quality of service but I did experience an example of this sort of thinking last Sunday during what was supposed to be a delicious late lunch in one of Kakopetria’s leading restaurants. My friends and I arrived after an energetic walk in the mountains, hungry and thirsty, looking forward to trout, snails, sheftalia and other delicacies the place is famous for. It was four o’clock so the restaurant was almost empty and the waiters didn’t seem to have too much to do. However, for a strange reason: 1) the remains of a preceding feast on the table we were sat at remained there throughout our meal; 2) our order was taken after about half an hour of waiting and only after two people chased a waiter to the kitchen; 3) one third of the food we ordered arrived cold; 4) one third of our food arrived not cooked properly; 5) one third of our food failed to appear (after another 30 minutes of waiting we asked about it and were told that these dishes were not available but then were still charged for them on our bill in Greek so it was a miracle that we noticed it); 6) all the side vegetables that we were served plus a tomato sauce on a vegetable stew were from cans (are there no fresh vegetables in Kakopetria?); 7) poor snails were so chewy I really couldn’t understand why they had to lose their lives for our benefit (what is the point of killing something so inedible?); 8) I am still waiting for Coke.
“Oh, but you should understand,” said an acquaintance I related the story to the following day, still in shock that this is a truly popular place even among Cypriots. “It was Sunday. They must have been very busy and tired and that’s why the service and food were so bad. But the interior is beautiful, isn’t it? I always take my foreign guests there because of it. It’s such a nice traditional Cypriot place.”
Sorry to disappoint my friend but no, “nice traditional Cypriot surroundings” won’t do in such a case. After an experience like mine no normal foreigner would think about going back.
??
??
??
??
