The plan is unsurprising in its main ambition: to diversify the country’s tourism industry by encouraging holidaymakers to move away from the beach into less visited places – and to underscore the beauty of the island that shimmers beyond the shoreline.
“Being an island, in the past, most of the development has been focused on the beach resorts and the beach areas,” explained the then-deputy minister of tourism, Savvas Perdios, before the twin volcanoes of Covid and war erupted, in 2019. “But if we continue with this approach [of continuing to expand the country’s package-tourism product], at some point there is not going to be anything left.”
There are various different strands to the change of emphasis, including “Cyprus Village Routes” (six driving tours designed to lure visitors inland), and the “Colourful Villages” scheme, which promotes the likes of Kalopanayiotis in the hope of attracting holidaymakers – while stemming the flood of younger islanders to employment on the coast, which has skewed the population balance in the countryside.
Even the briefest scan of the map shows that there is a good deal to divert the visitor who wants to look at Cyprus more deeply. Back in April, Telegraph Travel ranked the 50 main islands of the Mediterranean according to 28 categories, to produce a clear top ten.
While Cyprus was pipped to the post by the “champion” Sicily (the biggest island in Europe’s great sea), it finished an impressive second overall – having soared to fifth place in the “Natural Wonders” category, and to third in “History & Culture”.
These results are built on solid ground. The Troodos Mountains, which swarm across the centre of the landmass, are a hiker’s dream; the country’s ancient story is so detailed that it plays host to three Unesco World Heritage Sites, including extensive Mycenaean ruins on the Paphos shore.
Source link : https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/cyprus/why-the-middle-class-travel-snobs-are-wrong-about-cyprus/
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Publish date : 2023-07-05 03:00:00
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