Saturday, March 28, 2009

Blaming the CTO is easy!! Helping the CTO should be a national compromise.


The Cypriot Tourist Industry has a false opinion about the capabilities of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation. Blaming the CTO is very easy. People like Mr. Noel Josephides, Managing Director of Sunvil Holidays and Chairman of the Association of Greek Cypriot Travel Agents (UK), took the CTO to task for its bureaucracy and lack of responsiveness.

I would give an advice to the Greek Cypriots Travel Agents in the UK. Have some "Tourist Patriotism". Stop selling Turkey and Egypt, become real specialist on Cyprus as destination and not specialists on exploiting hotels. The tour operators that made most harm in the Cypriot Hoteliers is nobody else but members of your association, Libra Holidays, Argo Holidays just to mention the ones that busted the small hotelier in Cyprus last year.

I find the article of Cyprus Mail unfortunate and I think is time to grab the bull from the horns. The crisis can only be faced with imagination, good pricings, added value and unity. Mr. Josephides please stop blaming the CTO and look how you can help them in their task.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

The big opportunity of the incoming agents in the Mediterranean to go against the crisis

Semantic web, Web 2.0, collaborative marketing.… All these sound Chinese to most of us in the travel world. When your job has been going to the airport every week to check the arrival list “your” Tour Operator sent you and contrast it with the actual arrivals : then make sure, all got their luggage, their visas, their folder with the information and they are all the transfer bus heading for the hotel you have no reason why you should think you need to do any kind of marketing and even less any e-marketing.

Well things are changing, the tourists have created a new relationship with the destination, we know have a C2C relationship and this model the incoming agent is not in the scene simply because he is not there where the conversation takes place. C2C means Customer to Customer relationship, this means that when the 2 potential customers, Mr. C1 talks to Mr.C2 the incoming travel agent needs to listen to them, needs to be there, close to the conversation and change its services adequately to make them more “sexy”. Change it can only mean that instead of offering pre set sight seen trips to Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Egypt or Sicily he could offer a la carte guided tours after he identified the customers interests. If someone does not like museums why on earth give him a museum brochure. Listen what he likes and then when he arrives to the airport surprise him with a service. I like fishing, well when I arrive to Larnaca and see that my rep has book for me about the fishing in Cyprus and the types of fish I could catch then I will feel special , he/she gained my trust and this is priceless.

The question now is… can this happen online? Well yes, not only it happens now but is already a trend in other sectors. We need the leaders in our area to invest on “semantic tourism”.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Cyprus Airways is back to Paphos International Airport (PFO)


Cyprus Airways is back to Paphos International Airport. I would like to thank the company that made 2nd thoughts to give to the inhabitants of Paphos and Limassol the opportunity to leave their small towns and fly to Athens from the small new and unimportant Paphos International Airport (PFO).

This decision also has more benefits. We now have 4 flights a week to Athens. One by Cyprus Airways and three, yes 3 times a week with Aegean Airlines.

I only have one question. Why did Cyprus Airways took the flight away at the and what changed in one month time so they bring it back? I will not dare to come to any conclusions I hope they do not make 3rd thoughts and instead of flying to Athens decide to fly to Aman, amaan amaan….

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Let’s Meet in Cyprus, meetings and events under the sun


The Cyprus Tourism Organisation is preparing full speed for the up coming IMEX 2009 in Frankfurt. Cyprus is a great place for meetings of all kinds. The island offers a variety of Hotels that have all sizes of Meeting facilities with very good technological infrastructure to meet the needs of all kinds of meetings. The small distances and the great climate, especially now when rain came back again and the country is totally green, give the opportunity to the attendees of the meetings events you have to enjoy some time off the business agenda.

Meet in Limassol, Paphos or Agia Napa and in the afternoon visit the coffee shop of a “remote” village like Vasa Koilaniou near Troodos. Enjoy a home made sweet in the square of Omodos and then drive back to your hotel for a cocktail. In the evening you can continue your meeting at the old port of Limassol or in the fishing port of Paphos enjoying some fresh grilled fish.

Meet with the hotels and the DMCs from Cyprus to prepare your meeting plan. They will be there at (stand No C480.)

Hotels:
GRANDRESORT, LIMASSOL
GOLDEN BAY HOTEL
LE MERIDIEN LIMASSOL SPA & RESORT
INTERCONTINENTAL APHRODITE HILLS RESORT

DMCs:
A.D.A. TRAVELSCOPE LTD
HONEYWELL TRAVEL
OM DESTINATION MANAGEMENT
INCEMA TRAVEL
NEON CONFERENCES & INCENTIVES LTD

Ask for a meeting with them here

This post is published from www.emergence2009.com

Monday, March 16, 2009

Paphos Promenade


I was born in Paphos, by the fishing harbour in 1972. I am one of those citizens of Paphos that every Saturday afternoon I used to go for a walk with my friends to the sea front and try to impress the girls on the promenade, chat with them and see if they would accept an invitation for an ice cream.

We had a place to sit along the sea front. A bench built all along the front that apart from being the place to watch and to be watched also had the purpose of stopping the sea waves in winter.
The last few days we had a nice winter in Paphos, rain and rough sea. The sea wheat almost entered the cafeterias; people could not walk on the promenade, but nobody from the city council said a word.

The City Council led by the very qualified mayor, Mr. Savas Vergas, remade the promenade and you can neither sit and enjoy the view, nor cut the strong waves of winter.

The money spent for this works was public, our money, that means we elected capable people to manage our money and pay capable architects (Mr. Mesaritis from Nicosia).

I hope we see those capable people again elected so they make more great works like the Promenade…

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Advice to Global and Cyprus Tourism companies, published by PriceWaterHouseCoopers , supported by Tourism Is All of Us.


Travel companies should hold their nerve and not panic into cutting prices too soon.
Well mention that to Thomas Cook and Thomson who came to the annual meeting of the Cypriot hoteliers asking for 20% less on the already contacted rates.

That’s the advice from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, based on the results of a poll of 2,000 British consumers.
Mr. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, remember you were at this annual meeting previously mentioned.


According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers research, over two thirds of those polled will trade down from their usual level of holiday, but only 16% will stop going on holiday altogether.
This must make think all the hoteliers of the world and especially the ones in Cyprus, why on earth the arrivals went down 20% in January and February? How many direct customers they won or lost??

Aside from cutting back, 25% of the 2,000 polled will take a cheaper holiday in the same location by:

- Staying in a cheaper hotel
- Can we go cheaper in Cyprus? I guess not much more. NO VAT for hotels for the next 2 years, this would be a measure.

- Opting for self-catering
- Supermarkets will have a boom at least we will sell out nice juice Limassol tomatoes, Chloraka cucumbers and Kokkinochoria potatoes.

Read more here

Sunday, March 8, 2009

The smart guide to Northern Cyprus writen in stupid newspaper


They forgot to say that the land where the hotels they mention belongs to families that were violently displaced from their homes 35 years ago. They forget to mention that the EU and UK courts have many times dictated sentences against Turkey for not letting Greeks Cypriots to use their land, they forget to mention that in order to have hotels there we are today making the funerals of 3 small children assassinated by Turkish troops in cold blood in their baby beds and barrier in mass graves.

Read the article of our friend Mark Hodson and I am sure you would love to fly to “Ercan” and feel the warmth of the people there. He forgets that the people there are under military rule and that the people there are becoming people elsewhere since they leave “North Cyprus” due to military occupation by the troops they once beleived that they were ther to save them from the Greeks.

I understand that Mark has to make a living but he needs to be objective if he writes for the Sunday Times. He forgot to mention travel insurance from the EU does not cover the visitor there, he forgot to mention that the visitor is not allowed to take pictures in many areas, much more than you can think of since is military areas, he forgot to mention that the visitor takes risks and not even his embassy can help him.

Also the Sunday Times needs to be careful who writes what and how. Promoting illegality is similar to committing illegality. What is the difference between saying go to this shop where they sell stolen watches and buy a great Rolex for 30 pounds and go to “North Cyprus” and stay in this stolen hotel?

Read yourself the article here. Take your time

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Traditional Travel Agent Services to challenge Online Airline Services


All of us who remember how we used to go to the Travel Agent of our town to buy a ticket should also remember the blue Sabre or Amadeus screen where the lady who worked there used to type in those complex codes. Well whatever this lady could do on her screen we can now do it from home. All, or almost all state owned (or ex state owned airlines – including Cyprus Airways) have now a web site where the passenger himself can make a booking, pay and even get his/her boarding pass.

So why do we need travel agents? This question was made to me during our event in Limassol last month. Travel agents who live on ticketing have little future? Will they disappear? My opinion is that they will not disappear, they will have to adapt.

I was in the office of my travel agent in Nicosia the other day and what impressed me more were the answers the ladies and gentlemen that work there could answer over the phone in a very natural and sure manner. Questions that not even Google can answer that quickly and that accurately.

They were just brilliant, … no sir no worries your flight is confirmed and the assistance for your mother is also confirmed. You will have someone to pick her up in Rome to help her in the airport. His phone is ….

So my advice is, if you are a travel agent, offer good personalised service!! If you are a frequent or not so frequent flyer pay those 30 Euros service charge so you get tranquillity when you fly, every cent is worth it. Now if you are an airline invest in your web since not all of us have the luxury to book a flight on working hours.

In my way of seeing things the challenge is for the Airlines, they need to offer excellent web services to compete with the professionalism of the travel agents and not vice versa.

Have a good flight