A TEAM from the Commerce Ministry’s Consumer Protection Service (CPS) will be handing out leaflets today at Larnca airport, warning against bogus holiday clubs.
Holiday or ‘vacation’ clubs are an offshoot of timeshare activities, which emerged when the EU brought the latter under legislation. Touts offer people ‘lifetime’ holidays with preferential treatment for a price they say will pay dividends in the long run.
Consumers, especially tourists, then leave themselves open to being scammed for thousands of euros with the promise of cheaper future holidays. They are essentially booking systems for which you pay a large joining fee to enable you to book holidays at price which are generally no cheaper than that on the Internet or from travel agents.
Lack of EU legislation at the moment also means victims do not have the requisite ten-day cooling off period to change their minds.
The Ministry’s six-page leaflet, 7,000 of which will be distributed today at the airport warns incoming tourists to watch out for free scratch cards that always win, free or discount holiday packages, free air tickets, limited time offers and holiday discount cards.
In 2006, holiday clubs cost Britons £1.1 billion with 400,000 people falling for the scam. Most victims were between 35 and 64 years old.
According to Christos Solomonides, a senior official at the CPS Cyprus has not yet become a target of bogus holiday touts and the campaign being started today is to nip it in the bud by warning tourists what to look out for.
“Like these scratch cards,” he said. “They are all winning tickets”.
Solomonides said Cyprus was launching the campaign at the same time as the CPC’s British, Belgian and Spanish counterparts.
“The only difference will be that the British team will be stationed at the departures area in the UK,” he said.
“I am going to be at arrivals in Larnaca with four other people. We intend to cover as may flights as possible.”
Last month the UK Office of Fair Trading (OFT) warned Cyprus to stamp out the bogus holiday clubs before they take hold land and damage the tourist industry.
And since the emergence of holiday clubs designed to circumvent the timeshare legislation, the EU is in the process of incorporating them into the regulations.
But in the meantime, people who have been approached or handed over any money to touts should contact the CPC through the free telephone line 1429.
