With the hotel infrastructure that we have, the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) Angelos Loizou states in KYPE, we have all the funds to attract all types of tourism, whether it is conference, medical, sports tourism, etc., since we excel all our competing destinations in this aspect.
According to data provided to KYPE by the Tourist Officer of CTO Konstantinos Tsiappas, Cyprus currently has 26 - 5 * hotels with 12.040 beds, 58 - 4 * hotels with 21.805 beds, 78 - 3 * hotels with 15.902 beds, 42 - 2 * hotels with 3.588 beds and 22 - 1 * hotels with 975 beds. The total number of star hotels is 226 with 54.310 beds.
Most of the beds are in free Famagusta and then Paphos, followed by Limassol.
But it is not only the hotel beds. The hotel infrastructure extends to organized apartments A`, B` and C` class, tourist villages A` and B` class, tourist villas, traditional buildings, hostels, camps and other accommodation.
"Proportionally, we are the only country in Europe that has so many 5 * hotels. We get feedback from major travel organizers - who do various surveys among their thousands of customers - and say that our infrastructure in Cyprus is far superior to all competing destinations. "We have everything in terms of hotel infrastructure", says Mr. Loizou.
Asked if it would be better to have fewer 5 * hotels, given the fact that tourists who come now due to economic use leave less revenue, Mr. Loizou said that "it would be the most tragic mistake one could think of" .
We, he noted, place great emphasis on the extension of seasonality, to have tourists and other seasons. Hotels, he said, do what they can. We have, he told KYPE, a fairly rich range of covers to attract all the tastes of tourists but it should be understood that tourism is of great importance for the economy of the place.
"Maybe we should start from primary school to teach children what tourism means for our country. We want the people working in the tourism industry to be educated, to offer the highest possible quality so that we can continue to attract quality tourism. "Compared to competing countries, Cyprus offers better quality tourism", he added.
Another thing that is needed, Mr. Loizou continued, is accessibility by flights to Cyprus and to change all the negative points of our image that come out.
In relation to tourism these months, the President of the CTO states that "we are doing quite well".
"We have an increase until the end of June, we expect the results of July, which we expect to be at the same levels as last year, which was a good month, and we hope that we will have increases in the remaining months," he concludes.
Source: KYPE