Visionary Andreas Kaisis lost his booming businesses as Turkey invaded and stripped Cyprus of its most lucrative tourist and industrial assets, including his vehicle manufacturing factory, still trapped in a post-war no man’s land… With good church connections and strategic landholdings, this swank stargazer has recovered his lost fortunes and soared into the Island’s Rich List galaxy.
| By Terry Walker | 120722024 | 8 minute read |
It all started in his home town of Paphos, which was left behind economically in the post-independence, pre-invasion boom period. When I arrived there in 1973, donkeys still played a big role in commerce and farming. I saw hundreds of them in the streets and surrounding fields.
Paphos was the island’s capital in Roman times. It attracted visitors from across the Roman Empire, but more recently, it has been seen as a backwater compared to resorts like Limassol, Kyrenia, and Famagusta. Tourism had already boosted the local economy in the post-independence years, but Paphos was trailing behind other holiday resorts’ infrastructure and visitors.
A quality-build 4-star hotel on the Paphos beach had great potential, and I had been hired to ensure it became an international success. It was in the last stages of construction. It was on land owned by the Orthodox Church of Cyprus with an operator, Landmark Hotels and a designated manager who had already signed up.
I got stuck in producing a marketing plan and copywriting a sales brochure—vital words that could attract free-spending tourists, generate local jobs, and raise enough money to build the town’s badly needed new gymnasium (school).
The “Aphrodite goddess of love” legend suggests that anyone who swims around the nearby Petra tou Romuiou (Aphrodite’s Rock) will be blessed with eternal beauty and fertility. Ancient Greeks and their Roman successors had galleyed in for their vacations and to worship at the Sanctuary of Aphrodite. It was quickly agreed that the legendary offer would still generate good business for Paphos and its new beach hotel.
For hadn’t the fictional love story of Romeo and Juliet powered Verona to become the fourth most popular city in Italy? Shakespeare’s words were weaponised to generate millions in tourist revenue; Homer’s Aphrodite legends could likewise entice visitors to her birthplace in Cyprus.
400 working donkeys in the fields
Aphrodite would be a good vacation marketing strand, but we needed more amenities to attract European tourists to this remote place in the Mediterranean Sea. It was a four-and-a-half-hour flight from London to Nicosia with a high-end airfare of around £400 (£3,629 in 2024. Source: Bank of England).
In the 1970s, Cypriots regarded Paphos as the “Wild West,” I have no recall of any decent road going beyond Kato Paphos and Coral Bay. There was a lot of donkey power in the town, and there were 400 working donkeys in the fields around. One grateful village presented me with my own personal filly, a self-willed grey beauty called Paula, who helped me establish tourist donkey trekking in the nearby Tsada Hills and appeared in publicity photoshoots.
Paphos in the 1970s
With the hotel due to open in around nine months, I spent long hours with Michalaides, the manager designate who was overseeing the finishes and equipment. We reviewed the hotel’s facilities and added an outdoor barbeque area, as it never rains for most of the year in Paphos. A long pergola was needed to delineate the pool terrace from the public beach and provide shady places with a sea view for lounger users.
A gardener inserted some two-foot-long bougainvillaea twigs next to the pergola supports. By my next visit, the twigs had grown to 12 feet with two-foot-long flowers. Aphrodite’s fertility influence may extend to plant life, as I saw picket fences sprouting green shoots several times afterwards.
Pelicans filled their pouches
I got to know the harbourside bar and restaurant owners of Kato Paphos, including Georgiou’s Restaurant, where local pelicans came around for meals. A pair of the enormous birds would hoover up the diners’ leftovers before waddling off to the beach for a nap, their bills crammed with delicious red mullet. The place was also a favourite lunchtime stop for round-the-island coach and taxi tours – very busy on tour days. It is an excellent opportunity for the pelicans to fill their pouches to overflowing and retire to the beach for their regular kip.
One day, the pelicans didn’t reach the beach because a reversing tourist coach ran over them. “Tourist attractions killed by tourist bus” isn’t a helpful message, but there have been generations of pelicans to replace the originals. – and they can live for up to 25 years…
At the end of the harbour was a squat, shoebox-shaped bar called Le Blat. The owner, Paphian-born Andreas Kaisis, had valuable local contacts he was happy to share for my copywriting and marketing plans. Sundowner cocktails enabled us to work on our mutual ambitions for Paphos. Andreas taught me how to conjure up the island’s version of the whisky sour cocktail. It quickly became my drink of choice. On busy social evenings, I even mixed the drinks for customers who came to appreciate my rookie bartender’s liberal pours.
Best mate of President Makarius
Andreas wanted to provide his own cabaret – romantic Cypriot ballads delivered with his solid guitar playing. He looked right for the part: late twenties chiselled features beneath a mane of jet-black hair and an open blouson-style shirt. Very Greek Cypriot, a shoo-in for a role in Jason and the Argonauts
But Andreas had significant connections to the Church of Cyprus. He was the best mate of President Makarios III—a fellow Paphian—and a close insider to the current government hierarchy. These critical links gave him development land in Paphos and a large factory in Nicosia, where he built Dennis trucks and fire engines for sale locally and in 20 neighbouring countries.
One night, after the bar closed, Andreas and I drove into the hills overlooking Paphos, where the night sky was so clear I saw shooting stars for the first time. Andreas pointed to the land between our hillside perch and the beach. He revealed: ”I can get all this land for future development. Tourism can produce a promising future for my town. But first, we have to make a success of the Paphos Beach Hotel.”
He couldn’t have foreseen that artillery shells would replace shooting stars in just over a year and that the Paphos Beach Hotel and his truck factory near Nicosia Airport would be bombed out of business. His company’s purchase of the blueprints for the Clan sports car, designed by a team of former Lotus engineers, came with plans to set up an assembly line in a new Kaisis Motor Corporation (KMC) factory.
Well placed Government contacts
This plan was cut short after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus later in 1974 when the Kaisis factory was caught in the war’s resultant buffer zone and had to be abandoned. The factory sits vacant to this day. The Pathos Beach Hotel had enjoyed a successful opening period leading up to the Turkish army invasion, but the damage to the building caused by their trigger-happy fighter pilots. was a significant setback.
But despite the invasion, Andreas Kaisis, with the help of the monks at Kikko Monastery, well-placed Government contacts and his natural entrepreneurial verve, has become one of his nation’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen.
The Turkish occupation stripped the Greek-speaking Republic of Cyprus of its largest port, much of its richest farmland, and its leading tourism and manufacturing centres. It left a third of the territory controlled by the Turks. But that didn’t stop the enterprising Greek Cypriots from rebuilding their economy.
Most of the major revenue sources were cut off behind enemy lines. Fortunately, Cyprus was well-positioned to prosper.
Andreas Kaisis, entrepreneur
Andreas Kaisis claims Cyprus might not have become the important regional business hub it is today if the war hadn’t demolished the tiny country’s economy in the decade after the invasion.
“Most of the major revenue sources were cut off behind enemy lines. Fortunately, Cyprus was well-positioned to prosper,” says Kaisis, who proved this as he revived his truck and bus building business on a new site. He has added development and financing to his activities.
The ballad-singing/bar-owning entrepreneur has grown into a thriving international business tycoon over the fifty years since the Turkish invasion. He is now in the top ten of the Cyprus Rich List with a finger in many pies. His home town of Paphos is the major tourist destination we jointly dreamt it could become as we swam in the brand-new pool of the Paphos Beach Hotel, took shooting stars as a good omen for the future, and revelled in the tiny quayside bar where it all began…
Here’s what happened in 1970s Paphos, Cyprus
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