Filenews 29 January 2024 - by Dora Christodoulou
Among the many negatives for the tourism industry of Pafos due to the pandemic, a positive development emerged for the next day: Lost in the post-coronavirus era were the "compensation tourists", as well as the "ambulance lawyers", who caused hundreds of thousands of euros in damages to hotels in the years before the coronavirus.
"Compensation tourism" has been a constant source of unforeseen problems and discredit for the hotel industry in Paphos and Cyprus in general. The sharp decline in tourism flows from Britain during the two years of the pandemic has at least cleared the landscape of this practice, hotel industry officials point out, estimating that in the post-coronavirus era similar practices will no longer have space and ability to appear.
Speaking to "F", PASYXE Pafos member Marios Vassiliou pointed out that thousands of British tourists returned to their country after their holidays in Cyprus or other destinations and immediately resorted, with the encouragement and advice of skillful agents, to claims against the hotels where they vacationed, putting forward arguments for problems mainly of a medical nature that they allegedly faced during their stay in Cyprus.
Around the industry set up to demand compensation, Vassiliou said, were some so-called "ambulance lawyers" because they instruct people to file complaints demanding compensation. And their own remuneration is a function of whether the tourist receives compensation and how much. Tourists usually invoked, when they returned home, a medical problem that cannot be proven, mainly gastrointestinal problems they claimed to have suffered as a result of eating at the hotel.
Mr. Vassiliou points out that in essence the hands of hoteliers were tied, since almost in their entirety the hotels of Cyprus had been forced in recent years before the pandemic to accept the signing of contracts with British and other tourism giants for the arrival of tourism. And in these contracts, he stresses, unfortunately there is also a provision that if a customer claims compensation for something he suffered during his vacation, the hotel is immediately obliged to compensate him.
Through these lawyers, therefore, Marios Vassiliou points out, the tourists' claims were sent to the tour operators and they in turn forwarded them to the hotels, demanding compensation, regardless of whether this is proven to be true. Unfortunately, there was very little room for us to react. Since the tourist giants cover the occupancy rates of our units at rates of 70 or 90%, you cannot tell them anything.
These ever-increasing demands, however, have forced the institutions of the Republic and the tourism industry to take measures to address the problem, with the result that the consequences for tourists who falsely make such accusations are no longer negligible. As a consequence of this reaction, Mr. Vassiliou said, it was a sharp decline in the exploitation of the gaps that existed and today this practice, as a result of the pandemic, has almost completely disappeared.
