Paphos Life

Deputy Minister for Tourism Savvas Perdios said that 2019 is a difficult year for tourism, but stressed that there is no need for panic, pointing out that positive developments may be expected in the coming weeks with regard to covering the losses from flights that no longer operate to and from Cyprus....

Read the article and chat about it below...

A very good friend of ours who owns a mega busy restaurant on the Coral bay strip tells us its been a very good season so far, Also our car hire man reports a good year too.

Yes I can confirm as I have people I know who are in holiday trade say the same it has been a busy year, but with the £ in free fall next year I believe will be the opposite for the foreseeable future, the UK leaving the EU Cyprus will be an expensive holiday destination for most coming from the UK, not hard to see what will happen, it also will be difficult with those like myself who live on UK pensions the future exchange rates looks to be in a bad way.

What might help is creating awareness for animal wellbeing and improving the situation regarding stray cats and dogs. There are tourists who are deterred from visiting Cyprus because of the amount of uncared for stray animals. That´s something which spoils their visits.

Morning Jeba.

Maybe train the Cypriots just how to treat animals?, I agree there are too many stray cats certainly in my area of Cy, I feed several every morning so I am part of the problem? I have seen tourists taking left over food to feed feral cats from hotels, I doubt the local authorities care that much.

From a tourists point of view and I am one who has been travelling to Cyprus in excess of 20 years, two sometimes three times a year it is the cost of flights which is unfortunately going to have an impact on whether I will be able to continue travelling to Cyprus and I believe it will be the same for a lot of U.K. travellers. Jet2 from my local airport 40 minutes away are currently offering flights circa £900 for 2 with stupid o clock flight times. My only alternative is to travel from Birmingham some 2 hours away and hope I can get a cheap Blue Air flight. I suppose I could get a package holiday but there is absolutely no way I would go A1 and I prefer to travel independently in any event.
I found this year in June the eastern side of Cyprus Protaras/Pernera was incredibly quiet compared to previous years.
What is going to happen after Brexit is anyones guess, I just hope I will be able to at least squeeze in one trip a year.

Living in the east of the island, whilst it may have been quite a month or two back the local beaches are mobbed at the moment. Not that many Brits as far as I can tell, but plenty of Russian speakers and of course the summer shutdown mobs from Nicosia.

Having holidayed in Paphos for many years & met many members on this forum I miss it very much so why don't we still visit? Unfortunately in our case it is down to cost. We found a hotel we loved as so many return clients did but the cost of staying their rose significantly on our last 2 visits, over 40%. On our last visit we had a look at other hotels but found none that came close to the same standards. Over the years the hotel has focused on countries that are big spenders which perhaps is a good business decision

Our daughter told me the hotel she works in on TOTK road has been quieter than usual the last 3 months and has only started getting busy this last week and the son in law who works in one of the 5 star hotels said they had 50 empty rooms last month which is unheard of.

Jim

Aside from the animal cruelty issue raised by Jeba, recent bad press also has an effect eg the ongoing incident in Ayia Napa (alleged rape), the man who was run down and killed last year, both of which have been reported internationally, and of course not forgetting the numerous thefts from visitors accommodation and vehicles and there is also the issue of rubbish dumped in residential areas and in the countryside. So overall, not a very good impression for potential visitors.

Having said that a group of 10 people came to Cyprus for the first time this summer and told me they had a fantastic two weeks here!