All tourism operators in Cyprus and abroad admit that any recovery in tourism, not only this year but also in the coming years, will depend very much on the issue of vaccination, said today the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Savvas Perdios.
In his statements after the vaccination of members of the Council of Ministers, with the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, Mr. Perdios said that “it is very important and generally understood that in order to return to normalcy the road goes through vaccines and I believe that everything they do their job equally.
"So starting with this is the main reason we should all seek to be vaccinated. "Beyond that, it is self-evident that the more people are vaccinated in Cyprus, the more immunity we will have and the greater the chances that our country will do better this year in terms of tourism", noted Mr. Perdios.
He said that what our partners from abroad are constantly asking is how things are here, what is the epidemiological picture, how many tests we do, what is the percentage of positivity, how many will have been vaccinated by the summer.
Asked about the assessments that exist on the issue of tourism, the Deputy Minister of Tourism stated that "unfortunately things change so often that it is impossible for anyone to make predictions, estimates, etc. because now the easiest thing is for countries to close, to enter into lockdown, and consequently airline and travel organizer programs are canceled ”.
Therefore, any assessment is extremely risky because, in fact, an assessment to be current does not have any essential significance, he noted.
He pointed out that there are many airlines or tour operators that may have a program today but based on a decision of either their Government or ours to drastically change the data.
"So it is extremely difficult. What is very important to us is the following: in an equation that concerns the flight program of tour operators or airlines, two things play a role. The travel instructions from the country of origin and our own travel instructions or our protocol here in Cyprus ", he added.
He pointed out that “we have taken care to provide a stability protocol, so that anyone who comes to Cyprus can have the necessary tests, without having to be quarantined, without interrupting flights. So I believe that as Cyprus we have done everything we could to be receptive to anyone who wants to come to our country. From there and beyond, we are waiting for this now and we depend on travel instructions from foreign countries ", concluded Mr. Perdios.