Reputable Hotel with bad online reputation

Our friend Richard Sedley on his Twitter today was sending us on an article on the web of E-Consultancy about what importance brands should show about social media comments . A very interesting article that I read with great interest and inspired me to cruise on Trip Advisor and randomly check some hotels in Cyprus and Greece.

Amathus in Rhodes and Coral Beach in Pafos. Both hotels have positive and negative comments on this social media platform which I personally do not like. Now, the difference is that Rhodian Amathus followed up one negative and gave a very nice answer that makes lots of sense. Coral Beach never answers anything. This back turning gives the “excuse” to the guests to give even more negative reviews so as they influence more people. The conversation is only between the tourists and the hotel does not take any part.

Well this a fatal error. See by yourself here.

Coral Beach by Trip Advisor http://tiny.cc/i6F8P
Rhodian Amathus by Trip Advisor http://tiny.cc/7E7LF

This post is also posted on www.Emergence2009.com

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.

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

Let's go to Cyprus for Holidays

The annual conference of the Cyprus Hotel Association was this year really interesting.

We had the opportunity to hear how Thomas Cook and Thomson Holidays - TUI Group asked publicly the hoteliers of Cyprus to lower their prices even more so those two companies would be able to help the Cypriot Hotelier. Well I think is time to see reality. Thomas Cook and TUI Group are profitable organisations who are asking us to lose money so they make money because they drive tourist traffic in Cyprus. My question is do we really need them?

I ask the hoteliers to wake up and see that their hotels in Cyprus the only thing they need is to forget about the intermediates and go for the end user alone. This can only be achieved on-line. There are more than 20,000,000 (twenty million) travellers that plan their travel online every week. How much would the Cyprus Tourism Organisation would pay to have a slice of this pie? How much would the hotels invest to have their finger in this honey pot?

With this opportunity I would like to thank Dr. Dimitry Shevchenko for his clear vision and his real support to Cyprus as destination, also I would like to ask Mr. Jez Clarke to be more honest to the hoteliers (According to this customer Thomoson Holidays is selling excursions to "North Cyprus",) as well as Mr. Len Mina to look back and see the history and learn from it. Thomas Cook is recommednding the undiscovered noth of Cyprus.

Both tour operators thanked the Cyprus Tourism Organisation for the support in their marketing campaigns to bring tourist to Cyprus. This support I assume is not moral but monetary.

Last but not least, I would like to ask for our politicians to care more and care with real care for the industry and not use the name of the Cyprus Tourism industry to gain local impressions.

Thanks for your time and I really appreciate your loyalty reading this blog.