Where does Cyprus Tourism stands, according to Holiday Money Report ?

Holiday Money Report, British Post compares prices to the destinations British tourists usually travel. The 2009 report makes interesting points concerning the position of destinations, amongst them Cyprus, in the UK travel market. We took some points and added our comment and opinion.

• Bulgaria’s cheap packages and low living costs made it popular during the noughties – but another Balkan beach destination, Croatia, stole its thunder in 2009. Cyprus failed to compete due to Airline restrictions and late reaction of the sector, a bit of humbleness would not be bad sometimes.

• Turkey: seemingly unstoppable, resorts like Bodrum and Marmaris gave Turkey mass appeal. As the euro rose in value in the late noughties, a reputation for value and a weak currency made it the obvious choice for families looking for cheaper deals. This was the big bet,  families prefer Turkey due to price but not to quality. Cyprus with the boom of the 2nd house industry forgot tourism and as a domino effect the quality of service simply disappeared.

• Dubai: a 205 per cent rise in Post Office sales of the UAE dirham over the past four years shows that demand for holidays in the Emirate has been unrelenting. Dubai has a model that has never been tried before but its capacity to adapt in crisis environment maintained tourism relatively high and managed to offer value for money and excellent service at the resorts. Despite that Dubai is further from Cyprus the flight to Dubai from the UK was coming out cheaper. Cyprus was not able to play in the same league with Dubai ever but in times of crisis we had the opportunity to compete but we were very busy saving the last bits of the sinking ship.

• Egypt was the top mid-haul destination of the decade. Low package prices and cheap resort prices made Egypt’s Red Sea destinations popular with a 45 per cent growth in Post Office currency sales since 2005. We have no excuse as Cyprus not to be able to compete with Egypt. A destination with almost no infrastructure managed to shoot us on the foot and run away. Private sector was more active than the public sector and they took tourism management very seriously.

• Malta made a successful transition to the eurozone in 2008 and is now one of its cheapest members, with tourist items costing significantly less than in Cyprus, which joined at the same time. It seems that Cypriots have been busy again not managing their tourism. The stock market fraud before the euro and the price increase after the euro have been lethal.