The season has barely started but Ayia Napa is beginning to take the pulse. Tourists are slowly returning, enjoying the sunsets, restaurants and coastal views of the Cypriot resort.
On the waterfront, Vassilis Georgiou oversees the construction of a new ramp for the jet skis that are the highlight of his water sports business. Last year, more than 500,000 tourists visited the beachside stand and bought tickets for the boat cruises and parasailing that are also offered.
Until the US-led offensive against Iran last weekend, Georgiou was banking on another excellent year. “That’s far from safe now,” he said, covering his eyes from the setting sun. “It may be early, but I’ve been here since 1992 and suddenly hoteliers say bookings are down. People are thinking twice.”
No place in Europe, or even the Mediterranean, will feel the impact of the conflict unfolding on the horizon more than Cyprus. The tourism-dependent nation, the closest EU member to the Middle East, attracted 4 million visitors last year, a third of them British for whom the former colony is an old favourite.
This year could be different. Amid Iran’s retaliatory attacks, a drone launched by a pro-Iran militia hit the British RAF base Akrotiri late on Sunday, placing Cyprus firmly in the “risk zone” and causing the cancellation of many flights from the east and west.
As sirens at the base continued to sound in the following days, the British Foreign Office updated its travel advice for Cyprus to say that terrorist attacks could not be ruled out.
“We are hearing about cancellations, about a certain numbness at this week’s ITB,” said Fotos Kikillos at the Ayia Napa town hall, referring to the Berlin show widely regarded as the one that sets the tone for the travel industry. But he added: “As you can see, life here is very safe. People are having fun. There is no sense of fear. The last thing we want in Cyprus is to be dragged into this war.”
Among those wandering the resort town’s square last week were Karin and Oliver Kiilaspa, a young couple who had flown in from their native Estonia the day the British base was attacked.
Like most who visit Ayia Napa at this time of year, they had come for “a bit of sun, a bit of culture”, not the clubbing scene that attracts thousands of young revelers at the height of the season. “We were a little worried because we are here with our little daughter, but we wanted to think positive,” Karin said. “There’s a lot of snow where we come from and it’s like spring in Cyprus. We didn’t want to cancel because of what’s happening, because of a war. Trump is a psychopath.”
It was a refrain echoed by older Europeans in the country’s top coastal destination. Marianne Steglich, a Danish retiree who took part in a guided tour of what began as a fishing village on the eastern tip of the island, was clear: “We will be here for three weeks and I wasn’t going to miss it because of what they (the United States and Israel) are doing.”
Those who remember the 1974 Turkish invasion and its traumatic aftermath – events that would leave Cyprus ethnically fractured, with Greeks and Turkish Cypriots living on either side of a UN-patrolled buffer zone – laugh at concerns that the country would suddenly be deemed unsafe.
“Bah! When you see the sky full of parachutes and bombs exploding, then you get scared,” said a merchant who identified himself as Evros. “This, today, is a picnic.”
Andri Christoforou, who worked eight summers in Ayia Napa, wholeheartedly agrees. It is not lost on the tavern manager that tourists have become “accustomed” to seeing missiles flying through the night sky of the eastern Mediterranean.
Last summer, during the Gaza crisis, he recalls, diners could see the war on the horizon while eating on the terrace of the Vassos restaurant, one of the oldest in Ayia Napa. “People come here on vacation, to have a nice time,” he said. “Of course we are worried. Everyone talks about this war, the future and how long it will last. You have to be positive, otherwise it will harm your health.”
Accepting that cancellations had been seen across the Mediterranean, Kostas Koumis, the Cypriot deputy tourism minister, was quick to admit that while Cyprus had survived similar crises in the recent past, this time was different: the island nation had been forced to deal with a hostile incident on its own soil.
Everything, he insisted last week, would depend on how long the war lasted. “The unofficial start of the tourist season, each year, is essentially Catholic Easter, which (this year) falls on April 5,” he said. “If everything stops by then, then we can expect a good tourist season.
