February Newsletter

This Month's Feature:

Heading Further East

The Cyprus Tourism Organisation continues to look further east, following its opening of their Middle East and Arabian Gulf office in 2005 in Dubai, the CTO attended its first ever road show in Mumbai and New Delhi, India. The sub-continent outbound travel market has been on a steady expansion due to its steaming economy and increase in the middle class spending power. The growth in the market is slowly shifting from group travel to leisure and MICE, the latter being a major attention point for the organisation.

First time travellers will visit neighbouring destinations in Asia, however there has been an increase of arrivals into Europe and a sudden interest in Mediterranean destinations such as Egypt and Greece. The advantage for the island state is that the major holiday season in India starts from March to June which is the shoulder period for Cyprus. Summer rates start during the months June; therefore Indians can take advantage of the best weather the Mediterranean can offer at extremely competitive prices.

Dubai’s great attraction to the Indian market can only benefit Cyprus. The short haul India-Dubai flight can become a stop-over to reaching Cyprus which is only three hours away from the Gulf. Cyprus could become a combination of a Mediterranean holiday and a bustling mega polis shopping stop over. Another combination would be to connect Cyprus with neighbouring Egypt or Jordan as all three destinations would provide a great exotic archaeological get-away.

‘There is still tremendous work for the island nation of 750,000 to make an impact on the second most populated country in the world. However from the reception of the travel professionals in Mumbai and New Delhi for Cyprus was simply tremendous’ says the director of the Middle East CTO office Vassilis Theocharides .The island is more than beaches and a deep blue sea, it offers a great journey down 10,000 thousand years of history, quant mountain villages and a formidable back drop of Mediterranean fauna all at close proximity to Egypt, Greece and Lebanon which can easily be accessible by a short family cruise.