Saturday, January 23/2016

 CTO, the Cyprus Tourist Organisation, is claiming credit for an increase in tourists to the island last year in typically turgid Cypriot bureaucratic jargon, citing "hard and methodical work, achieved through a multi-level and complex effort." Well, yes, although terrorism in Tunisia, Turkey and Egypt did give Cyprus an edge over competing markets. The strength of the pound against the euro was another factor, and many avoided Greece because of bailout uncertainty. An editorial in the Cyprus Mail comments wryly: "If this were the case what had the CTO been doing the previous years? Why had it taken so many years for it to engage in the hard and methodical work and the multi-level and complex effort that achieved the impressive results of 2015? Why was there no intense and targeted action in 2013 and 2014?"