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A senior officer at the Cyprus Tourism Organisation is expected to be suspended soon for misleading the board that has also expressed its lack of confidence in General Director Marios Hannides.
In an unprecedented move by any semi-government organisation in Cyprus, board chairman Angelos Loizou confirmed on CyBC radio on Wednesday morning that a senior officer at the top A15 scale will be suspended, once the CTO’s lawyers have worked out the details.
Loizou said that “the cup had overflown” after several complaints and suspicions, with the latest being the misleading information provided by the senior officer in order to justify payouts to individuals and unjustified promotional budgets.
The board, he said, is also investigation the overseas marketing budgets, as well as fees paid to CTO representatives abroad.
As regards the General Director, Loizou said that the board members “can no longer work with him” and have lost every confidence.
The CTO Chairman said that the General Director is usually hired by the board and endorsed by the Council of Ministers, as happened with the previous board and administration. The board will now seek the advice of the present Council of Ministers and probably ask the competent Minister of Energy and Tourism to terminate the contract.
Hannides had recently been in the spotlight over unjustified expenses, including hiring a chauffer for the CTO service car. Ironically, he had also been put in charge of implementing a radical restructuring of the CTO staff and led a seminar that explained the “radical” overhaul at the government agency.
Having failed to become an independent body, the CTO was usually abused by all politicians, political parties and administrations for favourable appointments, very often of people who are clueless about tourism and promotion. The board had also become the “burial ground” for individuals who were not appointed to other public bodies or ministries, and as a result, the CTO had been at the mercy of incompetents, frustration staff even more.
For a change, Chairman Loizou is a former senior partner at PwC in charge of hospitality and a member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants, probably one of the most suitable candidates ever to be put in charge of such a body.
Recent cases of waste of public funds at CTO included ghastly advertising campaigns that caused more harm than good to the “friendly and hospitable” image Cyprus always tries to project, hiring advertising agencies that never delivered as expected, and even a case of the purchase of 2,000 fans with “Love Cyprus” printed on them in Chinese to be given out to visitors at a travel exhibition in Austria.
