1,000 tickets available for Verdi’s opera
Two prestigious events — the annual Paphos Aphrodite Festival this weekend and the world-class Cyprus Rally later in September – are expected to give a timely boost to the tourism industry, hampered by high labour costs and regional conflicts.
Although tourism arrivals were marginally up, about 0,7% in July, there is great disappointment in the drop of arrivals from Germany, which has been overcome by a push from the native market, with a bigger number of Cypriots choosing local holidays in July and August.
Total arrivals fell 1.3% in the seven-month period to July compared to the same period last year, despite an increase of arrivals from the U.K., the Scandinavian countries and from Russia. The fall was greatly attributable to a drop in tourist arrivals from Germany, the second largest tourist market for Cyprus.
Zacharias Ioannides, General Manager of the Cyprus Hotel Association, explained that the World Cup in Germany was an extraordinary event that kept many Germans at home, either in anticipation of seeing their team in the final or to make the extra business generated from the thousands of football tourists who descended on Germany.
“This has resulted in a numbing effect in Cyprus and probably in other markets as well, overturning the trend of the past two years,” Ioannides said.
Paphos’ Acting Mayor, Savvas Vergas, said that there is an evident increase of tourists throughout the opera week, both in the hotels and in the restaurants.
“This is the eighth year of the Paphos Aphrodite Festival and we now have a growing number of permanent visitors who return for the opera every year.”
“I have talked to hoteliers, restaurant owners and shop owners and they all agree that July and August were very good months for Paphos,” Vergas said, adding his town is now among the preference of Cypriot tourists as well, mostly from Nicosia and Larnaca.
He said that many Cypriots had gone to the Turkish-occupied north ever since the checkpoints opened, but that number has been dropping the past two years, with many returning to Paphos.
“We are very happy with the number of arrivals from the UK, despite many tourists preferring Greece and Turkey for their holidays. But we will not rest,” said Vergas, who is already heading the Tourism Committee that is looking into ways to promote Paphos even better next year.
“We are looking at promoting golf, the opera and sports even more and are constantly embarking on new efforts. Already, we have produced a brand-new promotional DVD in cooperation with the Paphos Chamber of Commerce and will distribute it at all overseas exhibitions we go to,” Vergas said.
Paphos ready for Verdi
One of the world’s leading opera houses, the State Academic Mariinsky Theatre, will present Giuseppe Verdi’s “Un ballo in maschera”, described by opera circles as “the most operatic of operas”, at the medieval Paphos castle this weekend.
Themis Philipides, general coordinator for the festival, said that the presence of the Mariinsky Theatre in Cyprus is in itself a very important cultural event.
He said the cost of this year’s festival is higher than in the past but tickets are available at reasonable prices (CYP 20-45) for the September 1, 2 and 3 performances.
He told the Financial Mirror that some 1,000 to 1,500 tickets were still available at the last count on Monday, but that this was a number that is quickly overcome as the day of the premiere gets nearer.
“We normally sell many tickets on Wednesday and Thursday,” Philipides said, admitting that interest seemed a bit lower this year, primarily because of the general drop in tourism to Paphos and Cyprus as a whole.
He said the dress rehearsal is scheduled for Thursday and many tickets, as many as 500, are sold every year on the morning of the second day, while he expects a bigger turnout this year from the large and affluent Russian community of Cyprus.
This year’s opera, “Un ballo in maschera” is the 23rd of the series of 32 operas composed by Giuseppe Verdi, better known by the English title “A Masked Ball”.
“The opera attracts the quality tourists we are after,” said Philippides, but said that there was a numbness in the market.
He blamed “a little bit of all” for the reasons of the drop in the number of foreign tourists this year, as the absence of German tourists is evident, while other factors such as costs also played a role in arrivals.
Hoteliers want reforms
The Cyprus Hotel Association has long been campaigning to control rising costs, which members attribute mainly to the increases handed to hotel staff under the threat of strikes every three years whenever the labour agreements are up for renewal.
As regards the hesitation to renew this year’s collective agreement, the CHA’s Zacharias Ioannides said the association had sought a smaller increase within the scope of competitiveness and the rationalization of certain aspects of the previous agreement.
These included the issues of Sunday overtime and certain days that coincided with public holidays. What the CHA did achieve, though, was the introduction of lower wage scales for newcomers to the sector and a commitment to renegotiate further rationalisation in future agreements.
“This is where we can improve the competitiveness of the Cyprus hotel package, but in the long term,” Ioannides said, in response to criticism that Cyprus is pricing itself out of the market.
