.
How can the Finance Minister expect to earn our trust to help get Cyprus out of the current economic fix, when the government refuses to discuss fundamental issues such as raising the retirement age (and boosting the troubled Social Insurance Fund) and freezing pay rises and benefits to ALL civil servants.
Once we get the government to lead by example, then we can start fixing other fundamental issues, such as the inability of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation to embark on aggressive campaigns to promote Cyprus and whatever advantages we may have over other cheaper (and sometimes better-quality) destinations.
The economy’s demise should also be a good opportunity for the government to fix some problems, such as tourism, industry, services and transport.
On the issue of tourism, the main driving force of the economy running parallel to the financial services, the problem, believe it or not, is quite simple – solve the age-old issues within CTO and by magic you will have saved the tourism industry.
Let us take the example of two key persons within the CTO and explain.
Phoebe Katsouris is the General Manager of the public tourism authority, but her appointment has been doubted as have many other appointments in government. This has blemished her career and contributed to the lack of smooth operation within the CTO. Mrs Katsouris enjoys great respect from among the travel industry at home and abroad, especially for her skills and willingness to help propel the sector to new heights. However, we feel there does not seem to be the necessary support from the CTO board, either from its chairman or the rest of the members, who should have been globe-trotting with Mrs Katsouris to promote Cyprus at every opportunity. If they are unwilling do the job, perhaps President Christofias should ask for other people to join as board members. We have several names we can recommend.
Then we go to the UK, where a small team headed by Orestis Rossides has been struggling through years to promote Cyprus with a minimal budget, sending plans, proposals, ideas to Cyprus, which remain locked up in a drawer somewhere or are not even taken into consideration. Seeing as the UK is our best tourism market to date, should we not pay more attention to this man efforts?
Other problems within the CTO, as with many other government offices, is the lack of communication. This begs the question – if people within the CTO don’t speak to each other, how to we expect to speak to the outer world? Who will convince the government and parliament to allow more spending? How will we negotiate with the big travel groups?
The new CTO chairman has enjoyed a few months of warming to the idea how the Organisation works. Now its time for his team to get working!
