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Why bother with fixing the tourism industry when absolutely nothing is done to make Cyprus competitive to similar-value destinations?
Hotel room prices remain exorbitantly high (at least for locals), restaurants keep on ripping off customers by overcharging for the frozen food they serve and mark up wines four or five times the supermarket prices, while beach-side establishments of reputable hotels charge heaven and earth for a simple sandwich and a small bottle of water. To top it all off, you can’t afford to escape because the taxi driver to the airport will rob you of any money left over from your other expenses.
These are not complaints from grumbling “bloody tourists” but from locals, who are the ones the hoteliers are allegedly trying to attract to stay home.
Perhaps the Minister of Finance was right two weeks ago when he blurted out the first thing that came to mind, which at the time happened to be high hotel prices despite incentives worth 52 mln euros announced by the state. He also rightly pointed out that some restaurants continue to overcharge, especially when it comes to value for money.
Then came the “high level” conference at the CTO last week where the island’s tourism officials deliberated on the measures that will be taken to control the damage from the reputation Cyprus has earned as an expensive destination. These measures include a price observatory that will post the prices of basic goods in tourist areas (water, frappe, coffee, salads, snacks, etc.) on the websites of the consumer associations, an interactive website that will include special offers on catering and other tourism services, as well as a “community” area to allow visitors to post comments. Finally, the 1429 Consumers’ Association hotline will be upgraded in order to operate longer hours and become more accessible to the public to submit their complaints for further investigation.
Surely, these are measures that should have been implemented not six but sixty months ago!
Until these measures start producing results and as the hoteliers refuse to lower prices (because they claim that August is the “only” month in the year when they expect to have a decent turnover), we will continue to recommend overseas destinations, where the service is better, people smile at you, you are not ripped off and you get good value for money.
