Tourist touts are suffocating Paphos

Sir,

As a regular visitor to Paphos for some 24 years, I cannot understand the damage to the tourist industry that is allowed to continue by the way of the timeshare touts.

I ventured down to the Paphos harbour car park last week and barely had time to pull my handbrake on when a young lady (and I use the term loosely) tapped on my window. In her hand I could see the lucky scratch card, I gestured with my head that I was not interested, as I have done a thousand times before. The woman then questioned my parenthood and told me to go and do something with myself that I did not think physically possible. I turned to my girlfriend and said, “There you are, welcome to Cyprus.”

While I was locking my car, her boyfriend drove by and gave me a menacing look. It seems that if you between 20-85 and are a couple, you are fair game to these touts. Whether you are in Coral Bay, on the harbour, at the market or on the Tomb of the Kings Road – just about anywhere.

I am no Sherlock Holmes but on a good day you will get about 10 of them standing by the kiosk on the harbour , their management normally stands opposite at the mouth of the car park. On the stretch of road leading from the harbour to the waterpark there are normally about another 20 – and don’t forget the Coral Bay bus stop,

The Cyprus tourist board can spend millions advertising in the UK but while this is left to carry on they might as well throw the money down the drain. I am by no means a whingeing Pom but wake up, CTO – smell the coffee. There is another expression “you snooze, you lose”: tourists are sick of it and a lot of them are not coming back,

Andy Wheeler,
Stafford/Paphos

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.