Forest Park Hotel

This is the story about the remarkable Skyrianides family who have made an indelible mark in Cyprus with regards to tourism and hospitality. One of their most remarkable legacies has been the Forest Park Hotel located in beautiful Platres. I had the privilege last year to stay at the Forest Park Hotel. That’s when I met and interviewed fourth generation descendant and current owner Heraklis Skyrianides. I began by asking him about his unusual name. He told me that his great, great, great grandfather Georgios came to Cyprus from the Greek island of Skyros around 1837 and soon after became known as Georgios Skyrianides. Georgios’ son Heraklis (1867 – 1943) would go on to build one of the first luxury hotels in Cyprus named the Pafsilipon in 1901. During the Ottoman period, Cyprus was considered to hold very little interest to the odd traveler. Living conditions were known to be unbearable and there were no suitable amenities on the island to accommodate the visitor beyond a roadside inn or a room in a monastery. The island had few roads and was known to become quite dusty in the summer and very muddy and damp in the winter. During the first half of the nineteenth century the only way to reach Cyprus was to board a commercial vessel from Marseille, Genoa or Trieste. At the turn of the twentieth century sea travel improved and visitors from Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Palestine would soon discover that the cool mountainous area of Cyprus was a perfect destination to escape the summer heat back home. Heraklis Senior had both money and vision and was therefore able to exploit an opportunity to attract visitors to Cyprus at a time when the island was ripe and ready to advance into the twentieth century. His vision opened up a new frontier in Cyprus where visitors could stay in luxury accommodation that was on par with hotels found in Europe and the British Empire. The Skyrianides family-run business boomed in Cyprus at a time when most of the island did not have electricity or air-conditioning. In the summer, the temperature up in the mountains was a comfortable twenty-eight degrees Celsius, which was a good ten degrees cooler than Nicosia and the surrounding lowlands. Many of the visitors from Egypt who stayed at the Pafsilipon arrived by boat (The Fordyier). Many of the visitors were wealthy Egyptians, Pashas, Beys and Greeks all looking to escape the summer heat by relaxing in the cool mountains of Platres. Local Cypriots too made good use of the newly established luxury hotels. Bourgeois families from Limassol and Nicosia would spend most of the summer school holidays in the mountains. Heraklis’ father George Skyrianides was born in Limassol in 1907. When he was twenty-one years old his father sent him to Switzerland to study hotel management at the famous Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. He was one of the first Cypriots to go there. When he returned to Cyprus in 1931 he convinced his father to build a second hotel in Platres on a family owned vineyard. His father agreed and immediately hired the Israeli architect Samuel Barkai to design the new hotel. The Forest Park Hotel was the first building in Cyprus to use reinforced concrete. The original portion of the hotel was made with hand-made bricks and was built with the hired help of local inhabitants. “They used to work from sunrise until sunset,” Heraklis states proudly. ‘That is why the building was completed so quickly.” He recalls that the workers were paid around 60 parathes (paras) a day. Back then 100 paras were equal to one piaster and nine piasters were equal to one shilling. The Skyrianides also planted hundreds of sequoias around the hotel to complement the existing pine forest on the mountain. In 1936, the Forest Park Hotel was opened for business. In many ways George Skyrianides was a man ahead of his time. At the end of the Second World War, air travel was introduced around the world as an alternative to sea travel. George anticipated that tourism would soon become an industry in itself. With many European cities and towns still in ruins after the war, Nicosia and other large towns in Cyprus were intact and still standing. George anticipated a world where tourists from around the world could catch a plane, ship or ferry and travel to Cyprus to experience a cosmopolitan vacation in a unique and exotic setting. Mainstream tourism didn’t really take off until the 1960s. Amongst the popular hotel destinations at that time was the Forest Park Hotel in Pano Platres, the Dome Hotel in Kyrenia, the Savoy Hotel in Famagusta, and the Ledra Palace Hotel in Nicosia. In fact, it was George Skyrianides who helped establish the Ledra Palace in Cyprus. He would go on to establish the Cyprus Hotelkeepers Association (now known as the Cyprus Tourism Organization) where he was the president for fifty years. In 1962, the Forest Park Hotel introduced private bathrooms in all of its rooms. Prior to this, guests had to share a communal bathroom located down the hall. Many famous people stayed at the Forest Park Hotel over the years including King Farouk and President Nassar from Egypt, Princess Irene from Greece, Archbishop Makarios and many world-famous actors, musicians, authors, artists and poets. When King Farouk arrived at the Forest Park in 1946 he brought with him an entourage of around forty people. Heraklis (who was five years old at the time) recalls how his father was forced to relocate all the existing guests to the nearby Olympus hotel in Troodos to make room for the Royal guests. No one complained about giving up their rooms. “Can you imagine if Queen Elizabeth came to Cyprus now,” Heraklis jokingly remarks. “Would the guests of a luxury hotel give up their rooms so willingly? I don’t think so.” There is a famous story about how King Farouk commissioned a young barman at the Forest Park named Stelios to mix up an alcoholic drink to look like ice tea. Farouk being Muslim did not want people to think he was drinking alcohol. Stelios, tried various concoctions and finally arrived at the brandy sour which is made up of two parts brandy, one part lemon squash, two drops of angostura bitters and topped with soda water. The brandy sour has since become the unofficial national cocktail of Cyprus. As children, Heraklis and his two siblings Antonakis (Anthony) and Daphne were not allowed to stay at the Forest Park except on Sunday afternoons when their father was free to spend some time with them. “We did not complain,” Heraklis says. “In fact we took it all for granted. There were no noisy kids running around the hotel back then. Times have changed and attitudes have changed” Because his father was a businessman, Heraklis and his siblings did not get to spend much time with him. Christmas and Sunday afternoons were the exception. His father was always away on business. His mother Sofia (nee Vourazeli) was also frequently away. She was born in Egypt and was also involved in the hotel business. Her brother owned the famous Victoria Hotel in Cairo. Once a year she would return to Cairo and stay for six months in order to retain her residency and not risk losing her assets. With both parents preoccupied with their separate business matters, Heraklis stayed with his grandmother in Limassol during the first six years of his life. When he was old enough to attend school he was sent to a boarding school in Nicosia. In 1952, aged 10 years old he was sent to a private boarding school in England. “As far as family life goes, I didn’t have very much of it,” he would say. “I had to live under these conditions. It was the done thing in those days.” “It must have been difficult for you?” I ask. “No, it was not difficult,” he replies promptly. “It made me more independent. I was travelling from Waterloo Station to Portsmouth from the age of eleven – on my own.” It was in Portsmouth where Heraklis would later study Hotel Management. At nineteen, when he finished his studies his father bought him a Sunbeam Rapier automobile, which he drove back to Cyprus through Europe. When I ask Heraklis to recall the days of ‘pomp and ceremony’ at the Forest Park Hotel he smiles and suddenly becomes more animated. He remembers how guests would arrive in all their finery fully aware of the privilege of staying at a hotel such as the Forest Park. They took great pleasure in dressing up for dinner and conversing with fellow guests and being entertained well into the night. During the day, they would wander around the idyllic property or sit and enjoy the company of others on the terrace or by the pool. The high society was always there. There were weddings, parties and dances too. Nowadays, it’s quite sad to see how anti-social and even disrespectful some guests have become. Heraklis recalls one local family who arrived for dinner one warm evening wearing flip-flops and swimsuits that were still dripping wet from the pool. They seemed oblivious to the puddle they had created on the carpet and on the fine velvet furniture. I ask Heraklis if the Forest Park hotel is heritage-listed or protected by some sort of preservation law. He laughs. “Do you know that if I were to pull down this hotel, no one would say a thing? No one would care.” I make a bold suggestion that if it happened that the hotel was no longer viable as a business then perhaps turning the building into a National Trust museum would be a wonderful thing for Cyprus. This way people could pay a small fee to step back in time and relive its past glory. The Bauhaus features alone would certainly attract artists and lovers of fine architecture. The money raised could perhaps pay for its continued restoration and preservation. Heraklis nods but remains silent. Perhaps he thinks I am a dreamer. Some locals I am told see the Forest Park as old and an eyesore. “Why don’t you knock it down,” they tell Heraklis. “And build something new and modern”. “As long as I’m alive,” he responds “I have no intention of making it modern. To improve it, yes. To restore it to the way it was in the 1940s – of course”. When I ask Heraklis about his views on modernising the hotel, he frowns and says. “What do you get from WIFI? People just sit there from morning to night. You don’t get anything out of them. Unfortunately, I realise in this day and age that it’s necessary. People won’t come unless you give them WIFI.” It saddens me to hear this but of course I know it’s the truth. I look out of the large window next to me at the pines and the magnificent views. I can certainly imagine that once upon a time (before the Internet) people would visit and walk about upright. They would take the time to greet their fellow guests and perhaps converse on the deck with one another or besides the pool, or at the bar. I glance back across the room towards the entrance of the hotel and see a dozen or so guests sitting silently playing with their devices. Heraklis notices my expression and tells me that some of his guests would stay up to ten days without venturing outdoors to explore the surrounds. Not once to visit the nearby Caledonian Falls, nor to visit Trooditissa monastery or to venture on a wonderful nature walk. When the conversation returns back to the subject of his father Heraklis leans forward, towards me as if he is about to share a secret. “You know, my father was a humble man,” he says softly. “You wouldn’t know that he was the owner of a luxury hotel.” George Skyrianides died peacefully in his room at the Forest Park in 2001 aged ninety-five and according to his son Heraklis, his mind was as sharp as it ever was until the end. Apparently George never went to see a doctor and he never needed medication. Instead his maintained a healthy, mainly vegetarian diet preferring to eat lentils to meat and adopting a daily ritual of drinking cups of boiled hot water. At seventy-six years of age, Heraklis Skyrianides seems to have inherited his father’s spirit and humbleness. He still greets his guests at the entrance of his hotel. He takes time to ensure they are aware of all the benefits of staying at the Forest Park. After my interview I take time to walk around the interior and exterior of this grand old establishment. Apart from a few plastic chairs scattered near the pool, the hotel has remained faithfully original in most areas. For this I am thankful. I hope and pray that grand old buildings like the Forest Park Hotel are forever preserved by their owners (with government assistance) so that future generations can appreciate these grand monuments from the past. For me, the Forest Park Hotel belongs to that ‘golden era’ that once existed on the island. Cyprus has lost too many magnificent old buildings to developers over the years. Let us hope that buildings like the Forest Park become ‘heritage listed’ so that they are forever protected from any rampaging bulldozers or narrow-minded plans for redevelopment.