It is not unusual for a single-operator sector of the economy to have a regulator in order to ensure that consumer rights are protected and the taxpayers’ money is not squandered, while maintaining some control on cost and fee fluctuations.
With the airports’ new operator coming under constant attack from scheduled and charter airline companies, as well as major tour operators, for having charged excessive fees that is in turn being passed on to the consumer, the presence of a regulator would, perhaps, appease some of the noises that have rightly or wrongly been made recently.
The airports operator has a contractual obligation to build and operate the new Larnaca airport terminal before the end of 2009 and deliver the refurbished Paphos terminal by the end of next year.
Some say that the government hastened to award the BOT contract to the Hermes Airports consortium without taking into consideration the explicit concerns raised by the tourism and travel industry’s stakeholders.
From a strange point of view, the airport operator is doing the tourism industry a big favour as it is the mass-market and low-cost charter operators that will seriously reconsider their policy on flights and packages to
In a sense, we are finally implementing what state tourism officials have orated about for decades, that we need “quality tourists†and that we should rid ourselves of the image of cheap holidays, neon-sign hotels and tasteless food.
But in the face of falling tourism arrivals and unsatisfactory hotel occupancy rates, is this what we really want? Should there not be anyone in the government to calculate how soon our tourism industry will be doomed for total destruction if airport rates and other retail costs continue to rise? Or are some people so obsessed with not admitting to any mistakes made during the airports privatization process that they do not want to pull their heads out of the sand?
What’s done is done and the airports BOT contract cannot be undone, as one disgruntled bidder found out during the lengthy courts process. We should turn the page and look forward to utilizing the new airport terminal to its best.
However, there should be some sort of control over airport rate hikes based on some logic, deriving from the (non-existent) national policy on tourism.
A regulator would go a long way to at least seem that the government cares about the increased costs burdened on the consumer.
