Can CTO account for the 14-year slump?

The Sunday Mail on January 4 carried a  letter to the editor entitled ‘The CTO Played a Crucial Role in Boosting Tourist Figures’. This defended the performance of the CTO which was  questioned in a previous article in the Cyprus Mail, ‘Tourism Boost in 2015 was Mainly Due to External Factors, not CTO’. The question is one of measurement.

Whether in athletics or business, performance is best measured in relation to the competition. A runner may have trained hard and tried his best but that is no basis for judging his performance to be excellent or even “fair” if he comes last in the race. Furthermore, it is best to judge performance over an extended period.

Over the years 2000-2012 tourist arrivals globally increased 52%. For our closest competitors, the Southern Mediterranean countries, tourist arrivals increased 44%. During this period Cyprus tourist arrivals actually decreased by -8%.

More recently Cyprus tourist arrivals have fared better. In 2015 arrivals here equaled the all time record of 2.7million. That record was first attained in 2001 and has only now been reached again. Moreover, it should be noted that the recent (2015) figure could be optimistic since this may now include arrivals heading for the north of the island.

If the CTO is serious about developing a tourist strategy the first step should be to arrive at an understanding of what happened between 2001 and 2015. “What accounts for the 14-year slump in tourist arrivals between 2001 and 2015? Why was 2001 such a good year? What accounts for the discrepancy between our performance and that of our rivals?

Dr. Jim Leontiades, Nicosia

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.