THE WISHFUL thinking that plagues political debate appears to have filtered through to the tourism sector. The big ideas and ambitious plans proposed yesterday by the chairman of the Hotel Managers’ Association were straight out of the wishful thinking manual. Not only did these ideas, divulged during the AGM of the Association, ignore the economic reality but they were based on the assumption that the mistakes of decades could be put right overnight.
While it is commendable to look to the future and to take a positive stand at a time of doom and gloom, there needs to be a sense of perspective. Making proposals that look good on paper and sound impressive to an audience are nothing more than an academic exercise, when not backed with practical details of how objectives could be achieved. Everyone would like to see Cyprus become a destination for high income tourists but this would not happen with speeches and talk of “pioneering infrastructure” and “professional superiority”.
The chairman of the Association, Polis Kallis, called for the immediate creation of an innovative and broad tourism infrastructure that would make the product more attractive and give Cyprus an advantage over its competitors. He said: “Through pioneering infrastructure we should target the attraction of world interest by the top people. Such pioneering works and activities would add more value and constitute the trademark of Cyprus.” Cyprus would gain an advantage by basing its policy on “product, marketing and professionalism”.
All these grandiose ideas would be fine in a school essay but when they are made by a seasoned professional of the tourism industry, they have to be backed with proposals for their implementation. Where would the funds for the innovative infrastructure come from and how long would this need to be put in place? To have innovative infrastructure that would attract top people we would have to demolish half our tourist resorts and rebuild them, which could take 10 to 20 years; would we close the shop in the meantime, assuming that souvenir shop and pub owners would agree to having their businesses demolished.
Who would pay for the upgrading of professionalism and how would we bring back the “traditional hospitality” for which Cyprus was known? The latter is easy for Kallis – all we had to do was change the mentality of our society which had become opportunistic and selfish. And presumably this would happen by sending everyone to night-school for a couple of weeks? And who would be responsible for these radical changes? Would it be the pitiful CTO which announces a new five-year strategic plan for tourism every few years but never implements anything?
The main problem of our tourist product was pointed out by the chairman of the Association of Cyprus Travel Agents, Victor Mantovanis last week. We were too expensive as a destination, which was why arrivals were down by 11 per cent. Unless high prices were tackled, we would never arrest the decline in tourist arrivals. Making the product more competitive should be the priority, while the innovative infrastructure should be left to the planners of the CTO.
