Death on ‘A corner of earth touched by heaven’ - Mother dies on a five star holiday to Cyprus

An online site promoting Northern Cyprus describes the area as being ‘A corner of earth touched by heaven’. In describing the locals the effusive copy tells us that the ‘Cypriot people are always cheerful, calm and hospitable’.  Sounds inviting doesn’t it? ....Of course it is, especially for those folk currently entombed in rain soaked Britain who haven’t seen the sun for months and who ache to go on holiday.

Fine.. I have no problem with that except that one has always got to counter the ‘cute copy’ used by these travel people and remind ourselves occasionally that this ‘corner of earth’ was also touched by bloodshed after the illegal invasion by the Turkish army in 1974, and one has to seriously doubt if there is to be found a genuinely ‘cheerful, calm, and hospitable Cypriot currently living in the occupied North, after they had their homes and businesses taken from them by the occupying forces.

But leaving that aside for the moment, one must stop and wonder at what tourists expect and receive from a holiday in the north, yes... they have fine hotels the majority having been taken from their rightful owners and turned over to Turkish migrants to run. No doubt the Turkish government told these migrants that they were going to go and live in a ‘corner of the earth touched by heaven’ and so they were sent over to the Occupied North to populate and run the north as part of the Turkish state.

This is where we now come to several difficulties as these probably well meaning family folk and workers did indeed work hard to make a livelihood they renovated the hotels and so set themselves up as hoteliers.

The key here is no one recognises within the EU the illegal state of “Northern Cyprus”  so tourists finding themselves attracted to cheaper prices than in southern Cyprus (the legally owned part of the island) can and do find themselves in trouble. The tragic case last year of the Englishwoman who stayed with her partner at a five star hotel only to die there after drinking from a water bottle containing cleaning fluid, left there by accident on a bedside table by the maid after she had cleaned the couples room.

A terrible thing to happen in this corner of earth and her partner will now have no end of trouble if he tries to pursue for compensation against the management of the hotel.

The legitimate and mercifully professional part of this island has strict hotel training systems in place which would disallow the potential for this sort of accident occurring. The legitimate Cyprus may well be a bit more expensive than the illegally occupied North but here you do have rights and are fully covered by EU laws.

Much has been said and done about the ‘Cyprus Problem’ what we should be doing is ensuring our tourists are safe no matter where they holiday on this island, we should continue to find ways to offer inclusivity towards the Turkish Cypriots,  something we are doing from this side of the island for many years now by organising day trips for visitors to the occupied north under the legal shield the UN via the Cyprus Green Line Agreement. What we don’t want is for the northern corner ‘touched by heaven’ to become a danger death zone for foreign tourists, here-we cannot afford to have headlines in the Daily Mail newspaper that scream ‘Mother dies on a five star holiday to Cyprus’.

For many tourists Cyprus is Cyprus -whether it’s Northern or Southern, most don’t actually care about what happened 38 years ago that caused this separation of the country, they see the prices and go.yes it’s hot there and they have great beaches... book it!

Unless we can all work together under EU legality in tourism to better our products and make safe our visitors then we will continue to receive fallout from the somewhat lack lustre capabilities currently being promoted within that ‘corner of earth touched by heaven’.

A letter form a friend - "Your welcome friends to Cyprus"

A good friend of mine in London after seeing the video “Your welcome friends to Cyprus” called to ask me if the whole thing was a big joke. or if it  was ‘frighteningly serious’. Until then, I had been unaware of the content having only seen some comments online. After watching the video I called and left a message on her voice mail saying- no, the video was indeed produced in Cyprus by professionals and it was not a joke.

Some hours later I received the following email from her which I now share with you.

“ Dear Petros,

Thank you for clarifying that the video was not some hoax.

Sadly the image of Cyprus as a forward thinking cosmopolitan country, one that has produced highly creative, talented, men and women, took what can only be described as a massive body blow when, the so called ‘welcome’ video was unleashed onto the unsuspecting public.

The recipients of this ‘welcome’ will be those countries looking to Cyprus as they head the European Council, sadly the  video is so amazingly bad in every respect that it looks as if Cyprus is effectively raising a sole digit ( a middle finger) to the EU.

The music is ghastly, the singer is off key and the words are so dreadful they take ‘corny’ to an entirely new level.

We have a man in a white outfit who is first seen crouched behind a rock as if caught short after a few beers, he then rises up to face the camera - to then waggle in front of us  two gold painted olive branches, also a less than fine pair of tuned tonsils.

As he does this simultaneous ‘waggling’ he threatens via the special ‘welcome’ song that  visitors ‘will  never be alone in Cyprus’ and ‘all will find themselves ‘walking with the lady Aphrodite’

By the end of this visual and audible torture -ones head is buried in a blanket of embarrassment as the Corn level has exceeded even this not so jolly, not so green, and defiantly no giant in any regard.
Its rumoured that 60.000 euros went into the making of this aberration- and 12 key sponsors were obviously keen to see their names listed at the end of the video-

Next time sponsors- best employ  a blind shepherd, and a donkey, fit the video camera to the back end of the donkey and have the shepherd sit astride the beast to wander the roads of Cyprus whilst reciting the Pafos phone book with  Abba singing along in the background –now thats what I call a Welcome video!”

APOEL vs Real Madrid, Scoring League Points.

The European Champions league quarter final between Apoel v Real Madrid offered a classic long odds, underdog story, given the huge disparities between the two clubs, the Nicosia based Apoel barely belonged on the same field as the mighty Madrid team.

They had to face Real Madrid one of the most consistent and richest winning teams of all time, with celebrity coach Jose Mourinho, and a line up that includes three of the top eleven players in the Castrol rankings, a team that had reached the knockout round after posting the best group stage record in history. There was no question in the minds of the football pundits that: - Apoel a team listed 100 in the UEFA’S rankings of European clubs, who had never won a Champions league group game and a club that worked with a lowly budget of under 10 million Euros -a budget less than the annual take home pay of Cristiano Ronaldo: - Apoel was without doubt –going down.

They did, losing to the Spanish team by 3 goals –Apoel didn’t score a goal on the field but they metaphorically scored-hitting their opponents  net multiple times in the eyes and minds of both supporters and even the pundits. This ‘small’ country team stood their ground against the might of Madrid for 70 action packed minutes without conceding a goal.

The game acted as a classic metaphor for the tourist industry, where small countries do have the right or, should I say the absolute prerogative, to be able to play in the tourism equivalent of the Champions league. A red card shouldn’t be waved in the faces of small countries whose tiny budgets mock the big leaguers, small countries can and do produce imaginative –creative proposals and they will invariably offer client’s higher levels of flexibility to equal even exceed that of a mass tourist destination.

Small countries will never be top of the tourist league but they will play and win points for the sheer unadulterated conviction at being able to get out there and show, like Apoel that although overpowered, outclassed, and  out of pocket, they always display verve, nerve, and pride in what they do, regardless of the outcome, small may not always rise to the top but they will always be ready to play, and unlike some of the big hitters in the tourist business, they wont be prone to hitting any own goals.

Ryan Air, a Mixed Blessing?

The recent agreement between Hermes airports and Ryan Air for the opening of their 50th operational base in Europe has to be looked at as both a blessing and a curse. We can count the blessings as follows.-
1. Ryan air will be committed to invest a substantial amount of money in order for the operational base to become viable.

2. Ryan Air will set tourist targets and when met this means a significant increase in tourist traffic to Cyprus. One can look at the success of Ryan Airs partnership with Spanish airports such as Girona and Reus.

3. Ryan Air is not into just one specific market such as the bucket shop package traveller, they are for the first time targeting the free independent traveller (FIT).

Like all blessings we should receive them gratefully, but at the same time we have to managing them correctly. Ryan Air, flying in plane loads of multiple blessings to Pafos means we have to look seriously at what we, as one half of the partnership can offer in return. According to the press officer of Pafos Hoteliers Association Mr. Evripides Loizides he summed up the current dilemma that is dancing around the minds of clear minded Pafos based businesses. ‘Ryan Air has arrived, but its now time we started to get really serious as a tourist destination’.

To date the Pafos tourist scene is viewed with pessimism by those in the business and there is a genuine fear that sectors within the market are not going to be entirely responsive to the demands made by this new wave of travellers.

A complete change of attitude has to start from the top down with our elected officials now having to waken up to the fact that with the arrival of independent tourists we have to quite simply ‘clean up our act’ and instead of the usual indifference and apathy, our municipal and community leaders have to get into the mind set of sustainability rather than ‘fast attainability.

We must also address the expected increase in traffic going to and from the airport, with there being a more noticeable demand for car rentals, taxi hire, mini buses etc, modes of transport which will carry more tourists but in much smaller groups. Pessimism is rife as to the anticipated increase in accident rates as our less than civil taxi drivers continue to follow the ‘old ways’ of unbridled rudeness mixed with a good dose of road rage. Deep pessimism also abounds when it comes to those restaurants who will no doubt continue their blinkered short term thinking by offering  their usual serving of ‘customer scare’ rather than the anticipated ‘customer care’.

What’s actually needed is for us to all to be re educated into what exactly the art of tourism really is, how we must now be ready to play a new and effective role, rather than re-enact our constipated, lack lustre, short term mind set formed over the past disastrous decade.

The opportunity offered to us by claiming Pafos as a European Capital of Culture in 2017 coupled with the Ryan Air arrival are ‘good sparks’ which should be igniting the flame of a ‘healthy tourism fire’. The pessimist in me however worries that we may have the making of such a fire but sadly no –one has brought alone the matches.

The Ryan Air agreement could be compared to morphine in that this is an opiate which doubles as both a form of pain relief and as an addictive drug which, if taken to excess results in a slow death. Our sole dependency on Ryan Air can also be viewed as dangerous if we become too addicted, as we have experienced to our cost when we depend so much on tour operators.

Surely the avowed aim to the tourist sector by the state and Cyprus Airports has to be the practice of  healthy independence with no more reliance on addictive practises so we can at long last transform Pafos into an attractive sustainable tourist destination which thrives year in year out without recourse to entering into any unholy, inappropriate, or short term relationships.

A Different Seasonal Greeting

I will not be sending you a festive greeting in the form of card or gift. This is not because I am in any way against the spirit of Christmas, I just prefer to use the money in a more effective manner and so bring tangible ‘cheer’ to those whose lives are blighted by abject poverty and fear. My donation as always will go to KIVA an NGO that offers people the chance to become micro-lenders for as little as 25euros/pounds/ etc to men and women living in developing countries.

Here is how it works. A lender goes to the Kiva website which displays photos of pre screened people and tells you what they need the money for and how much they require. The lenders make a choice and pay by credit card. Kiva then transfers the money to a local partner, which then makes the loan to the business. During the period of the loan, the partner provides updates to the lender on the businesses progress and collects repayment, which the lender can withdraw from Kiva or re-loan.

An example of how successful Kiva has been is demonstrated by the experience of Nicholas Kristof the New York Times columnist. He loaned $25 to a TV repair shop owner and bakery in Afghanistan. The baker had received $425 from a total of seven American lenders, enough to open a second bakery. The TV repairman had also opened a second shop. Between them they had created six new jobs and, in the process, increased the chances that Afghanistan can succeed in building a moderate Muslim democracy in the face of the Taliban’s efforts to undo it. Kirstof had his investment returned and he then reinvested in a different project.

I have also invested over the past five years via Kiva in small family businesses related to tourism where the amount of money has been infinitesimal and yet to them it is tremendous and the 50 -100 euro investment has gone on to make a huge difference to a families fortunes, and yes, in all those years I have never failed to get my original investment returned to me.

Savings in very poor countries are impossible to mount, and the flow of International money into these countries is fast drying up. The disbursement of small amounts to the worlds specific poor for specific purpose is one answer, loans made by concerned people in the west in what some call ‘many to many’ lending. In the past four years Kiva is lending around $50 million annually and defaults are as good as unknown.

This Christmas I hope you will join me and the many other thousands of people who have helped ‘make a difference’ in a families life -not just for Christmas – for life.

My very best wishes to you and all your loved ones and may you have a very happy Christmas. Petros Mavros.

Go Greek for a week

The UK Television Channel 4 created what they thought was an objective look at the Greek economic crisis by trying to replicate the lives of Greek workers using English men and women who pretended to ‘Go Greek for a Week’. The result was a less than inspiring glimpse behind the somewhat smug and obviously negative mind set of the producers of this so called reality programme.

In what can only be described as an unusual outpouring of objectivity I now feel obliged to direct the British consumers to go Greek for a week, but this time to go -do it .......in Greece.

British families visiting Greece this summer will certainly have the opportunity to contribute to the Greek recovery since, their government is not doing it through the euro zone, and I now offer this open invitation for all British tourists to book now so they can “conquer” some of the most beautiful Greek beaches, Greek islands and Greek villages.

This experience will most certainly blot from ones memory all the misery that currently exists in their homeland by taking the first available flight to Athens, Crete or Rhodes and there meet with authentic ‘real’ Greek culture.

Going Greek for a week will mean different things to different people some will travel to Athens, the city that never sleeps, others may choose a remote village perched high above the Aegean sea, many will opt to journey from the Peloponnese to Macedonia, meeting en route real Greeks who have never heard of Channel 4 television and couldn’t care less about this type of stereotypical presenting of different cultures- Why? Because ‘Real Greeks’ are too busy living their lives as best they can under difficult financial circumstances, an experience I hasten to add that is now being swiftly mirrored by the average ‘real Brit’ in their homeland. .

The Greek economic situation is certainly tragic, and those suffering the most are the men and women losing their livelihoods their homes, and their pride. Greece however is a country with a great capacity for recovery something that has been solidly proven over the past 150 years.

The German occupation during the 2nd World War emptied the Greek banks and occupiers stole the entire country’s gold reserves, this was just the beginning of the end for the Greek economy. After the Civil War Greek villages and towns were abandoned by the youth either to go to America or Australia as economic immigrants or they travelled to Athens to find jobs.
This situation left behind untouched unique villages that today still retain and conserve a truly special beauty and character with enormous potential for tourism.

So now is the time for the British Tourist to ‘really Go Greek for a Week ( or perhaps a fortnight) and experience for themselves a country that may be ‘down’ but certainly ‘not out’ as the beauty, romance, and friendliness will always be there in abundance and waiting for you will only be ‘Real Greeks’ ready to welcome you.

Petros Mavros