EU urges Cyprus to boost ‘sustainable tourism’

A senior European Commission official is meeting with tourism industry stakeholders this week, urging them to adopt new ways to promote tourism, by making Cyprus a more sustainable destination.
Francesco Ianniello, Head of the Tourism Unit at DG Enterprise and Industry, told the Financial Mirror that “the renewed tourism policy was proposed by the Commission in 2006, aiming to help the industry meet a number of challenges while promoting overall competitiveness.”
Ianniello said that those challenges include facing up to Europe’s ageing population, growing external competition, consumer demands for more specialised tourism and the need to develop more sustainable and environmentally friendly practices.
“The revised tourism policy seeks to produce more and better jobs by nurturing conditions that will help tourism grow strongly in the coming years,” he said, adding that this growth is expected to come out of novel programmes, such as the network of European Destinations of Excellence (EDEN) where tourism management meets environmental, social and cultural sustainability, and Calypso, aimed at the four target groups of youth, senior citizens, families with special needs and the disabled.
EDEN has been successfully adopted by the Cyprus Tourism Organisation which has already designated three ‘emerging destinations’ based on economic, environmental and social-cultural criteria. The EDEN programme has 52 such mainly rural destinations, which he hopes will someday rise to several hundred. EDEN focuses on rural tourism, national parks, intangible national assets and a new category of aquatic destinations to be introduced in 2010.
He is also glad that Commissioner-designate Antonio Tajani has pledged that tourism will be one of his two priorities, to be revealed during the European Parliament hearings in January.
Ianniello has also been pleasantly surprised from the fruitful cooperation that has emerged among regional destinations that would have otherwise been considered as rivals, such as the ‘PACA’ region in France, Spain’s Catalonia and Italy’s Tuscany.
The Calypso programme is an action to increase the number of European tourists within Europe.
“The European Parliament asked us to launch a preparatory reaction, as in every EU member state there exists some form of social tourism. For example, the Spanish are sending 1.2 mln senior citizens to internal or overseas destinations out of season that is helping with hotel occupancy rates, employment and even travel, and are considering an exchange with neighbouring Portugal, as part of the SEGITOUR programme. I am happy to say that Cyprus has accepted to join the programme with 21 other member states.”
Ianniello said that several conferences have taken place and others have been planned where the social partners and industry stakeholders will discuss the issue of demand (from member states, trade unions, social welfare groups) and offer (hotels, facilities, etc.) and review the potential benefits, such as reducing the burden on welfare programmes when senior citizens go to warmer destinations in winter.
He also mentioned the unique programme of the ‘Iron Curtain Trails’ which has been embraced by all the countries on either side of the former Iron Curtain that want to develop 6,000 kms of cycling routes or hiking paths, where people might even be nostalgic or want to learn and teach history.