Cyprus considers port makeover
The Cyprus government is in talks with a group of companies about a 500-million-euro upgrade to the port of Larnaca to boost passenger traffic, the director general of the Cyprus Ports Authority said yesterday. The Zenon Consortium, which includes Louis plc, the largest tourist company in Greece and Cyprus, Italian cruise operator Costa Crociere and French construction company Bouygues Batiments International may conclude talks with the government within five months, Yiannakis Kokkinos told Bloomberg. «We are discussing the possibility of undertaking this project of converting an area of 300,000 square meters of land at the port into a facility related to passenger business,» Kokkinos said. It would include hotel accommodation, apartments, offices, shopping and entertainment centers and would be completed in three phases by 2020, he said. The project will aim to generate new business and not compete with the existing cruise operations at the port of Limassol, where a 15-million-euro passenger terminal will be constructed by 2012, Kokkinos said. Limassol port is the exit and entry point for 99 percent of total passenger traffic. Data last month showed that the number of tourists that visited Cyprus in July rose 0.7 percent, as an increase in Russian and Scandinavian visitors offset a decline in arrivals from the UK and Greece. (Bloomberg, Kathimerini)
