Tourism helped Cyprus exit from crisis, minister says

Tourism was a pillar of growth in recent years and has contributed substantially to Cyprus’ exit from the financial crisis, Interior Minister Constantinos Petrides said on Friday, following a meeting with the associations of hoteliers and tourist agents.

In remarks after the session, Petrides said: “tourism was certainly a pillar of growth in recent years, perhaps even the main reason we have managed to exit the financial crisis, and this is mainly due to the efforts of the private sector”.

According to Petrides, the sheer volume of applications for tourist developments has caused delays, and “we discussed ways that can improve the ministry services’ ability to cope with all the applications”.

“We also discussed a government bill that is under review by the Legal Service and relates to hotel rankings,” Petrides said.

“It is a very important bill that will allow the substantial qualitative upgrading of hotels so they can become more competitive and differentiate their product offering according to the demand from overseas.”

The minister said another issue was discussed, relating to old, abandoned hotels that are an eyesore.

“The reason these structures are not being demolished is that building coefficients used to be higher and would be lost if new developments were built,” he explained.

“We will bring a proposal to the cabinet for the old building coefficients to remain in the case of these old structures being replaced by new developments.”

Hoteliers’ association chief Haris Loizides welcomed the meeting with the interior minister and said that “since 2013 tourism has been the steam engine of economic growth and I believe it must continue to work in this direction”.

“We believe there is room to further increase incoming tourism, but at the same time there must be careful upgrading of infrastructure and all services that make up the tourist product,” he said.

Tourist agents’ association leader Akis Vavlitis stressed that the legal review of the new hotel listings is urgent and appealed to parliament to approve the creation of a Tourism under-secretariat in September.

 

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