SOARING demand by young clubbers for peak-season self-catering accommodation in Ayia Napa will fill the Cyprus resort to bursting point this summer, operators predict.
Apartments in Ayia Napa are already all but sold out for July and August, having shot to notoriety in Channel 4’s series Ayia Napa: Fantasy Island, the show that highlighted the resort as a young people’s clubbing Mecca.
Airglobe product manager Simon Barnes said: “I calculate 10% of those who would like to go to Ayia Napa this summer have booked already. The other 90% will be left disappointed.
“The resort has taken us by surprise – we hadn’t pre-empted the growth of the club scene and have had to turn away a lot of groups. Many are now booking for Protaras instead,” he added.
Argo is steering families towards hotel rather than apartment accommodation in Ayia Napa, according to managing director Mathilde Robert. “We make clear to them what Ayia Napa’s all about,” she said.
“I’m concerned that when Ayia Napa is full, young people will stay en masse in Protaras, which is quieter and not their kind of resort at all. It could do Cyprus tourism a lot of damage.”
Cyprair manager George Spyrou remained concerned at the effect of peak-season overcrowding in Ayia Napa on the resort’s own four and five-star hotels. “Ayia Napa seems to have replaced Ibiza in attracting a younger sub-culture and this could have an affect on the higher standard hotels if people stay away from the resort,” he said.
“Families and couples will probably stay away from Ayia Napa and go to Paphos, Limassol or Larnaca instead. But it’s great for Cyprus in that it widens the country’s profile.”
Not all operators are as optimistic. Sunvil doesn’t brochure the resort at all. Managing director Noel Josephides said: “We don’t feature Ayia Napa because of its image. My fear is that older people will think all of Cyprus is like Ayia Napa and stay away.”
The trade in Cyprus, determined to nip any overspill problem in the bud, has organised meetings at regional level to try and avoid this, according to the Cyprus Tourism Organisation’s UK director Orestis Rossides.
He said: “The TV promotion of Ayia Napa as a young people’s resort has really stimulated the youth market. However, I don’t think they’d enjoy nearby Protaras – it’s more for families.”
Ayia Napa is only part of the Cyprus success story – bookings from the UK were 33% up on last year at the end of January, improving on a winter season running 9% up. Exact figures were not available. The boom began with another TV programme, the BBC drama Sunburn, which helped to boost UK arrivals by 14% to a record 1.15m last year, out of a 2.43m visitor total for the country.
Other major markets for Cyprus are Germany, Sweden and states of the former Soviet Union. It was the Swedes, 12% up at 128,000 last year, who first took to Ayia Napa in the 1980s.
Tourism growth to Cyprus has been further encouraged over the past three years by hotel price increases of just 2% annually, below the rate of inflation.
“The downside is that we’re starting to see a bottleneck in July and August – not only in Ayia Napa and Protaras but also Paphos,” said Rossides.
The five-star Anassa is the only hotel to have opened in the last four years – the result of the Cyprus government’s partial block on hotel building that has been in place since 1990.