-Why Cyprus Needs to Rediscover the Stories and People That Make It Different-

By Dr Vasilis Papavasiliou

When you travel, what is it about a place that makes you remember it? What makes one destination different from another?

People rarely remember the hotel room number, the airport, or even the perfectly written slogan on a tourism advertisement. Most likely, they remember the village festival they discovered by accident, the smell of local food drifting through the streets, or perhaps the grandmother making a traditional sweet while explaining a recipe that was never written down. The live music. The laughter. The unexpected moment that was never included in the itinerary.

I have spent much of my academic and professional life studying tourism, destinations and the stories we tell about places. But I have also experienced tourism outside the classroom: through travelling, cultural events, public speaking, including TEDx, digital storytelling and simply observing how people experience my own country, Cyprus.

And I have come to believe something quite strongly:

“Cyprus does not simply need more tourists. It needs a stronger story – and the right people to tell it!”

For decades, we have successfully promoted Cyprus through sunshine, beaches and hospitality. All are genuine strengths. But beautiful beaches and good weather are offered by countless destinations. So, what is unmistakably Cyprus?

We call ourselves the Island of Love, the legendary birthplace of Aphrodite. Yet I often find myself asking: Where is Aphrodite?

Where are the legends visitors can encounter? Where are the characters of our folklore? Where are the local people in traditional costumes, our musicians, craftspeople and storytellers? Why do they appear mainly during particular festivals rather than becoming recognisable ambassadors of the Cyprus experience? Perhaps we do not need to invent another tourism identity. Perhaps we need to rediscover the one already beneath our feet.

Imagine arriving on the Island of Love and Beauty and encountering a destination where mythology, traditional costumes, village life, food, wine, music and contemporary creativity become chapters of the same story. Not something manufactured for tourists. Something already ours.

The Cyprus Coffee

Even the smallest experiences can carry that identity. Think about Cyprus coffee. Served in a small cup – espresso style. To Cyprus locals, it may seem ordinary. But to a visitor, that tiny cup can become a cultural experience: the preparation, the foam, the sediment of coffee left under the cup, the conversation that accompanies it and, occasionally, someone turning the cup upside down to jokingly reveal what the future holds as it has been done traditionaly…. Suddenly, we are not selling coffee…. We are sharing a ritual!

That is the difference between providing a product and creating a memory. In an age when travellers can ask artificial intelligence to build an itinerary in seconds and see thousands of beautiful beaches before breakfast, information is everywhere. Meaning is harder to find. And meaning is where storytelling becomes powerful.

People Are Part of the Story

Perhaps some of the strongest stories, however, are not created by destinations at all. They are created by people. Travelling has taught me that the moments I remember most are often surprisingly simple.

When I arrived in Taiwan, a local friend picked me up from the airport on her scooter and took me beyond the places I would probably have discovered as a tourist. I remember a tiny dessert shop hidden in a neighbourhood outside the city centre and meeting local people who became excited when they discovered I was from Cyprus. We exchanged stories about our countries, our food and our lives. Nothing extraordinary appeared on an itinerary that day. Yet years later, I remember it.

In Orlando, Florida, the experience was even simpler. I had just arrived, alone with my luggage, and could not figure out how the bus ticketing and schedualing system worked. The driver looked at me and simply said: “No worries, I got you!”. It probably meant very little to him. To a tired traveller arriving somewhere unfamiliar, it meant considerably more.

Then there was a small family-owned hotel in Vietnam. Their card machine would not accept my Visa card. What could easily have become an uncomfortable transaction became another memory. The family offered to drive me to a local shop where I could exchange money and pay them in the local currency. What surprised me even more was that they kept telling me not to worry about paying at all. I was the one insisting on settling the bill. I remember their friendliness far more clearly than I remember the room.

Sometimes these encounters travel in the opposite direction. While working as a tour guide in Cyprus, I met visitors from Thailand who later offered to welcome me into their home when I visited their country. In Beijing, I remember sharing food with local people and their enthusiasm as they welcomed me and introduced me to local delicacies.

None of these experiences required an enormous investment. There was no sophisticated technology involved and no advertising campaign created them. They were simply people being people. Yet they became part of how I remember Taiwan, the United States, Vietnam, Thailand and China.

And there is a business lesson hidden in that. The receptionist who notices that somebody looks lost. The employee who takes an extra minute to explain something. The waiter who proudly recommends a local dish. The salesperson who remembers a returning customer. The person responding to a complaint who chooses empathy rather than a rehearsed response.

For that brief encounter, that person is the company. And when cultures, languages and expectations are different, these seemingly small human interactions can become even more significant.

What Carnival Taught Me

Some of my greatest lessons about tourism have happened far away from academic conferences. I have participated in the Limassol Carnival for many years, and in 2025 I had the honour of becoming its Carnival King. Experiencing Carnival from that position made me look differently at a tradition I had known throughout my life. I saw its history and joy, but I also saw its enormous potential.

During Carnival, Limassol becomes a different city. For a few days, the streets become a stage. People who would normally pass each other without a word suddenly dance together. Strangers ask to take photographs with one another, businesses decorate their windows and entire families appear in costumes planned months in advance.

The celebration does not simply take place in Limassol; it temporarily becomes part of the identity of the city. So why should an experience with such colour, history and character remain primarily a predominantly a local celebration? Why could the Limassol Carnival not develop into an even more internationally recognised cultural event and become one of the experiences people travel to Cyprus specifically to encounter? For me, its future rests on three ideas: creativity, inclusivity and sustainability.

Tradition should not mean repetition. Creativity allows each generation to reinterpret Carnival. Inclusivity creates a celebration in which people feel they belong, regardless of age, background or identity. Sustainability ensures that as our celebrations grow, our environmental responsibility grows with them.

Preserving tradition does not mean freezing it in time.  The strongest traditions survive because people keep finding new reasons to participate in them.

Dionysus at the Limassol Wine Festival

Wine in Cyprus is not simply a product. It connects agriculture, villages, families, celebration, history and mythology. So why not bring that mythology to life?

At the Limassol Wine Festival, with the support of the Limassol Municipality, I introduced Aphrodite and Dionysus as living characters interacting with visitors. I dressed as Dionysus and walked around the festival welcoming people. And something fascinating happened. People stopped. They smiled. They wanted photographs. Children stared with curiosity. Visitors asked questions. For a moment, mythology was no longer something trapped in an archaeological site or written in a history book. Aphrodite and Dionysus were walking through the Wine Festival. That experience reinforced something I increasingly believe: culture becomes far more powerful when people are invited not simply to observe it, but to interact with it.

Bring back Aphrodite. Bring back our legends, traditional costumes, village characters, craftspeople and storytellers – not as museum pieces, but as living parts of contemporary Cyprus.

The Business of Storytelling

But what does any of this have to do with business? Turns our, quite a lot! The challenge facing Cyprus tourism is not so different from the challenge facing a business trying to compete internationally.

In a world where customers can compare hundreds of hotels, products, restaurants and services from a mobile phone, being good is no longer always enough. Someone else may offer something similar, cheaper or faster. The more difficult question is:

What makes you memorable?

The examples may be different – a cup of coffee, a cultural festival, an unexpected act of kindness or an ancient story brought back to life – but the principle is remarkably similar. What we remember is rarely just the product or service itself. We remember the meaning and the people around it – the experience. 

Whether you are running a hotel, a technology company, a family business, a restaurant, a start-up or an international organisation, people do not experience your business only through what you sell. They experience how you communicate, how you make them feel, what you stand for and, increasingly, what they tell somebody else about you afterwards.

This becomes even more important internationally. The further a business travels from home, the more it competes in a world of similarities. Being from Cyprus should not simply describe where a company is registered or where a product was made. It can communicate character, creativity, hospitality, history and a particular way of seeing the world.

Perhaps that is the business lesson hidden inside tourism: differentiation does not always come from inventing something new. Sometimes it comes from recognising what is already distinctive about you and learning how to communicate it better.

The future of Cyprus tourism will not depend only on how many people we persuade to visit, but on how many leave carrying a piece of Cyprus with them.

And when somebody asks them what Cyprus was like, I hope they will have an answer far more interesting than: “The weather was beautiful.”

Author: Din Kumar