How Cyprus Tourism could recover lost jobs. Social tourism and Sports Tourism are the keys.
Cyprus is suffering for the first time after its independence in 1960 the most severe lost of jobs. We have never experienced this kind of job cuts and so many unemployed people both Cypriots and foreign workers. The official numbers and the real numbers are not the same. Pafos alone has more than 12% of its active population unemployed according to official numbers, the unions talk about more.
In tourism , the all year round island idea, died many years ago when we have put all our tourism focus in the UK market which for many years it was the golden goose. Things were not always like that, back in 1987 Cyprus had a low season in tourism during winter but not a dead one as it is now. Pafos used to attract many retired Scandinavians who enjoyed the warm days of February and for them a cold Mediterranean swim in the calm waters was all the luxury they were looking for. Of course prices and services then were not the same as today, but that time should have taught us a lot, and unfortunately it did not.
Recovering this market is not an easy task, but it is feasible. We know that there are intentions to activate Social Tourism Plans in Cyprus in a similar way the Spanish are doing it with IMSERSO (Instituto de Mayores y Servicios Sociales) and expanding it to the rest of Europe. The Cypriot state is not financially healthy as all other Euro zone countries, but still it can incentivise especially the Scandinavian and German (Austrian and Swiss included) elders to spend some days in Cyprus.
We calculate that with a plan of External Social Tourism, we could recover at least 200,000 overnights in Pafos from November to March. This means approximately 30,000 passengers landing to Pafos alone. Now, why Pafos only? We consider that Pafos could specialise in this sector during winter and Ayia Napa could specialise on Sports Tourism, especially football team preparation, also from the frozen Nordic countries. Like this the local authorities are kept focused and at the same time help each other and not compete with each other. About Sports Tourism we will talk in our next article with detail.
Avantless has already designed a multilevel Social Tourism Action Plan and is ready to help implement it with anyone who is willing to finance it. The Plan has be elaborated using the experience of our consultants in Spain and has been adapted to be more flexible and more productive taking into account the Cyprus Tourism reality. The plan includes apart from the mechanics of implementation, a strong marketing aspect based basically on online tools. Taking into consideration the huge broadband penetration the Nordic countries, Germany, Austria and Switzerland have, we have elaborated a simple but very effective plan which we believe it could have excellent results. There are more than one million one hundred and thirty thousand (1,130,000) people above 55 years old acting on a daily basis on the Social Media Sphere in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. We think that we could attract 2% using the adequate online tools and expertise (something Avantless has) and of course having the correct incentives in place.
Plans like this could keep many hotels open during winter, keep the subsidiary services going but most importantly help to maintain many jobs or even create new job posts for specialised services. The only thing needed now is the political will to move ahead together with the correct financial backup.