A recession proof hotel

REVIEW FROM THE SUNDAY MAIL NEWSPAPER

By Jill Campbell Mackay

WHEN you walk into the Nereus Hotel in Paphos there's no scary concierge checking you out, nor unfeasibly large flower arrangements holding centre stage. Instead, there's Kostas Panayiotides.

He is a big bear of a man clad in casual shirt and chinos, bearing down on me with a wide smile. After a cheery wave to some guests, he settles down to tell me why his hotel - with an occupancy rate of between 85 per cent and 90 per cent all year round - seems to be bucking the general trend of tourist gloom and doom.

When I suggest that the only profitable model for tourism in Cyprus is, and always has been, sticking the greatest number of bums on beds, I'm met with a ‘you must be crazy' eye roll and a languid wave of his hand.

"That's not what it should ever be all about. It should be about meeting the guests' needs in the best way possible and charging a reasonable rate so you encourage them to come back. It's that simple," said Kostas. The standard daily rate for a double room with breakfast at the Nereus is 40 euros.

"It's about giving people a sense that you really care about what happens to them on a daily basis while on holiday. You must make them feel safe, happy, and contented," he said.

If these key elements are lacking, Kostas said, no amount of infinity pools and saunas will compensate. The other vital ingredient is a good loyal staff that is up to the job and genuinely likes people.

"All the staff has been with us for years and they have the same philosophy as me, which is to take care of the guests as people. Even though we are talking here of 105 rooms, we make sure we know every one of those guests."

Kostas points to the lady manning the reception desk. "That's Ellada, who has been with us since the hotel opened 20 years ago. Everyone that comes through that door for the first time she will remember them the next time they come to stay."

Ellada's speciality is making people feel at home like the way she ensures one repeat visitor's request for a rocking chair in his room is always met.

The hotel's reward for such attention to detail has been the phenomenal loyalty of its customers.

One family, for example, visited first as parents with young children. Then the children came as adults, and now they came as parents themselves with the grandparents too.

"One couple sadly no longer with us were Les and Jenny. They came here on holiday 34 times. That's our standing record, but we do have a few at the moment who will probably beat that record, God willing," said Kostas.

"We also get to know a lot of the highs and lows of our guests' lives. You can't help it, as the people we get to stay are very generous lovely people who just enjoy feeling cared for. They will send us cards and letters telling us what's going on in their lives, and we in turn treat them as extended family members."

An elderly but sprightly Englishman approaches us. Kostas greets him by name, then with a laugh, the Englishman bends low to Kostas' ear and inquires in a low conspiratorial voice, "Have you tracked down my false teeth yet?" Then, he walks on into the breakfast room.

It transpires that on one visit this gent was a little the worse for wear after having enjoyed a little too much local brandy. When the time came to divest himself of the booze plus his dinner, his false teeth fell out into the toilet bowl and he unwittingly flushed them away. "It's a standing joke," Kosta said. "It was three years ago this happened but he always asks, and I always tell him we are still looking for them although I doubt if he would ever really want them back again."

It's clear that Kostas with his wife, his father, mother, sister and aunties, all run the hotel with a sort of parental devotion. They love nothing better than to sit and talk to guests, and some of the stories they have to tell are both funny and poignant. For example there are the couples who have visited for years until the time only one comes back because their partner has died. Some return with a new spouse, which momentarily confuses everyone.

Then, there's the reputation the hotel has for matchmaking as over the years romance has blossomed into lifelong partnerships for at least ten couples who met whilst staying at the Nereus. This number doesn't include receptionist Ellada who along with Kostas also met their spouses when they came to stay at the hotel.

And it was most certainly not all false teeth and Zimmer frames the morning I visited. There were also young families there enjoying an English cooked breakfast.

Parents with children said they particularly appreciated the relaxed atmosphere of the hotel. "We all want sunny relaxed holidays with our children, but usually that means self catering because the prospect of three meals a day taken in public is sometimes too horrific to contemplate," said one mother. "Big fancy hotels always make children uneasy. Here where the children are welcomed and treated with respect, they nearly always behave well because they don't feel like lepers whenever they enter the dining room."

"Many hotels try too hard to impress, when all a guest wants is to feel comfortable," said Jim York, on holiday with his wife Adele. "When you get back to the hotel at the end of the day you should feel as if you're coming home, so we have been coming back here for the past ten years to what we call our perfect holiday home."

They then went on to trying and persuade me to join them for Sunday's roast carvery special for the very reasonable rate of 9.95 euros for the privilege.

Some of our tourism problems are deep rooted and cannot be fixed quickly. But the Nereus example proves that common sense and decency are crucial elements to survival.

Nereus is a three-star hotel

Situated in Kato Paphos

Tel 26 943101

www.nereushotel.com