paBefore GetOffers.com, I worked in travel tech for several years. I started in customer support and later moved into sales. In both roles, I kept hearing the same complaints from business clients: a service fee was added to every ticket, and companies paid it because nobody had offered them another way to book.

Smaller firms had it worse. Most corporate travel tools were designed for large organisations, so a company of 40 people would end up booking through consumer websites. At the end of the quarter, the finance team had no clear picture of what had been spent or why.

There is no shortage of flights or hotels. What companies were really paying for was a chain of intermediaries, each adding its own margin, with no one competing for the booking.

We launched GetOffers.com this year to give businesses net rates. A company describes the trip in one message, and competing offers from suppliers come back in the same conversation, alongside approval rules and reporting. Because we started recently, we could build the product around an AI assistant from the beginning.

A model for three markets

Large online travel agencies are built for people booking holidays. Established corporate platforms mostly serve large enterprises, with the pricing and implementation time that come with that. A mid-sized company that travels frequently but has no travel manager doesn’t really fit either model.

We work with three groups. Companies get net rates and can set travel policies, approve trips and see reports in the same place. Connecting is free, and in our standard model, we don’t add a GetOffers booking fee. We make our money through agreements with suppliers, including revenue sharing. The customer should see the full price and the supplier’s terms before approving the trip.

Travel agencies use the platform to build trips from net rates. The assistant assembles the whole trip from competing supplier offers, usually the most time-consuming part of a manager’s work, and the agency keeps its margin.

Hotels can offer guests transfers, excursions and eSIMs directly, without paying commission to an intermediary.

For clients, this mainly means lower prices and less time spent on bookings. For us, it means we don’t depend on a single type of customer.

Where AI helps

You can speak to the assistant or type to it at any time. A typical request might be: “I have a meeting in Limassol on Tuesday morning, I need to be back on Wednesday evening, and it has to be within our policy.”

The assistant puts competing offers side by side and highlights the one that fits best. Once the traveller or their manager agrees, it books everything, including the flight, hotel and airport transfer.

Before booking, though, it should ask about things you might not have mentioned. Are you taking equipment with you? Will you be arriving at the hotel late? Those answers could change what it recommends. I’d rather it asked than left you to sort out a problem when you get there.

At the moment, it’s most useful for routine work: searching, comparing prices, combining several services into one trip and checking everything against company rules. When a trip is complicated or something unusual comes up, a person still needs to make the decision. We tell clients that from the start.

Over the next five years, I expect assistants to do more before and after booking. If a team is going to a trade fair and nearby hotels are filling up, the assistant should warn them while rooms are still available.

With cancellations, it gets harder. A replacement flight might get you to the right city, but too late for the meeting. The hotel and transfer may need changing, too. That’s the work I’d like the assistant to take on, with the traveller agreeing to any changes in price or booking conditions.

Expense reporting will change as well. Most reports should be generated from booking data, so employees don’t have to collect receipts after every trip.

I don’t expect travel agents to disappear. Those who use these tools will be able to handle more clients, putting pressure on those who don’t.

Earning clients’ trust

GetOffers.com launched this year, and we’re not publishing figures yet. It’s too early for the numbers to say much.

The hardest part so far is getting companies to trust us with their travel. Some have used the same agency for years. Their agent knows who prefers an early flight, who approves the budget and who to call when plans change. I understand why they wouldn’t switch on price alone. We have to show we understand how they work and that moving their bookings to us won’t mean more work for them.

Working with three types of clients also makes growth harder to plan. Companies come to us for prices and choice, while suppliers want to see booking volume before offering good rates. We’ve already signed agreements with several major wholesalers, which lets us offer competitive prices before volume builds up.

Every client comes to us through direct conversations, and each one teaches us something about the product. The clients most open to trying it are independent agencies, whose managers spend hours assembling trips by hand, and mid-sized firms that travel internationally but have no one dedicated to travel. Both feel the problem most directly, so that is where we are focusing.

Growth plans and Cyprus

In three years, I’d like GetOffers.com to be the first place a travel agency or a company without a travel department goes when they need to put together a trip.

We’re currently concentrating on the product and our first clients. We’ll consider raising money when there’s a clear need for it, and we’re happy to talk to investors who know the travel sector. We plan to expand into new markets as client demand appears, rather than following a fixed timetable.

On the product side, we want the assistant to handle more of the trip after booking. That includes dealing with delays and cancellations, recording expenses automatically and connecting through our API to the accounting and HR systems companies already use.

Cyprus is an important market for us. It has been a difficult year for tourism here, and hotels are looking closely at every source of revenue. Services beyond the room, such as transfers or activities, can make a real difference. Hotels should be able to sell them without giving a large share to intermediaries.

The hotel association has just called for AI to become part of the national tourism strategy. I agree, but for smaller hotels, the tools have to be affordable and simple to set up. Otherwise, only the large chains will benefit.

Business travel is the other part of the picture. Limassol and Larnaca are home to many international companies whose staff travel constantly and the government is now supporting conference tourism outside the summer months. Business trips and events help hotels fill rooms in the quieter season, and that is where we would like to be useful.

https://getoffers.com/

Locals have made developers drop billions of dollars in data center plans. They may have to win that fight again at the state level

Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape the legal profession, with law firms increasingly exploring how emerging technologies can improve research, document analysis and other aspects of legal work without compromising professional judgement.

Speaking to the Cyprus Mail for the latest issue of Cyprus 4.0, Elias Neocleous, managing partner of Elias Neocleous & Co. LLC, explained that the development of NeoLaw.ai reflects a longer-term effort to integrate technology into legal practice rather than a response to the recent AI boom.

Developed as an internal legal support environment, NeoLaw.ai is intended to assist lawyers with research, complex documentation, case preparation, preliminary risk analysis and routine administrative work.

Neocleous argued that the value of AI lies not in replacing legal expertise, but in freeing lawyers to concentrate on areas where human judgement, creativity and professional responsibility remain essential.

The discussion also examined the safeguards required when AI is used in a profession where accuracy and confidentiality are fundamental, as well as the potential for Cyprus to develop into a regional hub for technology-enabled professional services.

Looking ahead, Neocleous considered how AI could gradually change the delivery of legal services and why the future of LegalTech may ultimately involve rethinking the role of the lawyer itself.

What problem in the legal sector led you to create NeoLaw.ai, and what gap were you trying to address that existing legal tools could not adequately solve?

The origins of NeoLaw.ai predate the recent surge of interest in large language models. Its development was not a reaction to technological fashion, but a continuation of a long-standing philosophy: that the legal profession must evolve in step with the broader trajectory of human progress. Automation, in various forms, has shaped industries since the industrial revolution; artificial intelligence represents simply the next phase of that continuum.

From our perspective, the gap was not merely technological, but conceptual. Existing tools often approached legal work as a process to be accelerated, rather than a discipline to be enhanced. Our objective was different. We sought to create an environment in which our lawyers are empowered – freed from repetitive tasks, yet supported in exercising judgement, creativity and precision.

Ultimately, NeoLaw.ai was designed not as a substitute for legal expertise, but as a mechanism to elevate it, ensuring that we serve our clients with greater clarity, consistency and foresight.

For someone encountering NeoLaw.ai for the first time, how does the platform work and what can it do for lawyers or legal teams in practical terms?

NeoLaw.ai is designed as an integrated legal support environment, embedded within the daily workflow of our lawyers rather than operating as a detached tool. In practical terms, it enables in-depth legal research across multiple sources, assists in the review and analysis of complex documentation and supports case preparation through structured insights and references to relevant case law.

It can also provide preliminary risk analysis, helping legal teams to identify potential issues at an early stage and contributes to the automation of routine administrative tasks that would otherwise consume valuable time.

Importantly, its development is not static. NeoLaw.ai evolves in parallel with our firm’s broader commitment to continuous improvement. Each use case informs further refinement, ensuring that the platform becomes progressively more aligned with the realities of legal practice and the increasing demands placed upon it.

What role does artificial intelligence play within the firm, and how have you approached issues such as accuracy, reliability and the risk of AI-generated errors in a legal context?

Artificial intelligence occupies a central, but carefully defined, role within the firm. It is not viewed as an autonomous decision-maker, but as a tool that enhances the capabilities of experienced practitioners. Accuracy and reliability are therefore not secondary considerations – they are foundational. Every output generated through NeoLaw.ai is subject to review by our legal professionals, ensuring that judgement remains firmly in human hands.

We approach this as a co-existing relationship: the system supports our lawyers, while our lawyers continuously refine and train the system through informed use. This dynamic mitigates the risk of error while strengthening the overall quality of output. In a legal context, where precision is inseparable from responsibility, such safeguards are essential. The objective is not simply efficiency, but the preservation- and enhancement – of professional integrity.

LegalTech is developing rapidly internationally. Where do you believe NeoLaw.ai can differentiate itself from the growing number of AI-powered legal tools entering the market?

NeoLaw.ai distinguishes itself not by attempting to compete with every emerging LegalTech solution, but by being deliberately and precisely tailored to the realities of our own practice. It has been developed around our internal processes, structures, templates and accumulated institutional knowledge – elements that no external platform, however sophisticated, can fully replicate. In that sense, its primary advantage lies in its alignment with how we actually work, rather than how legal work is generically modelled.

Equally important is our underlying approach. We have not built NeoLaw.ai with commercialisation as the driving force, but with a practical question in mind: how can this system meaningfully enhance the quality and efficiency of our legal services? This inward focus allows for a level of refinement and adaptability that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.

Finally, the platform is hosted entirely on our internal infrastructure, ensuring the highest standards of confidentiality and data security – an essential consideration in the legal profession.

What have you learned from developing and bringing NeoLaw.ai to market so far, particularly from working with lawyers and other users who are adopting AI into their professional workflows?

What the development of NeoLaw.ai has revealed, perhaps more than anything else, is that technological progress is ultimately a human question. The success of such an initiative depends less on the sophistication of the tool itself and more on the willingness of people to engage with it. It requires a team with vision-one that does not merely tolerate change, but recognises it as a constant parameter of professional life. In that sense, we have not sought to “invent” technology, but to thoughtfully integrate it into our existing systems.

Equally instructive has been the pattern of adoption. Even within a large and forward-looking organisation, the familiar dynamics of the bell curve apply – early adopters lead, others follow more cautiously. This has reinforced the importance of structured implementation and internal dialogue.

Perhaps most importantly, the process has sharpened our understanding of what truly matters in legal practice: distinguishing enduring value from operational noise, and identifying where change is genuinely necessary.

Do you see Cyprus developing a significant LegalTech ecosystem of its own, and what would need to happen for the country to become a stronger regional hub for legal technology and innovation?

Cyprus is unlikely, at least in the near term, to develop a LegalTech ecosystem on the scale of larger jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom, the United States, or key Central European markets. These are environments where the sheer volume and international reach of law firms create the natural demand that drives large-scale LegalTech innovation. By comparison, the Cypriot legal market is more focused and specialised, which inevitably shapes the direction and scale of technological development within it.

That said, the broader technology ecosystem in Cyprus is stronger than it has ever been. The entry of globally recognised innovation platforms, such as Plug and Play Tech Center, signals a meaningful shift. Combined with Cyprus’ strategic location, regulatory alignment with the European Union, and an increasingly sophisticated professional services sector, this creates a compelling foundation.

Rather than leading in LegalTech production, Cyprus is well positioned to emerge as a regional hub for technology-enabled services-where innovation is applied, refined, and integrated into high-value professional practice.

Looking beyond the current product, what opportunities do you see for AI to transform the legal profession over the next five years, and where do you expect NeoLaw.ai to fit into that transformation?

Over the next five years, artificial intelligence is likely to reshape the legal profession not through sudden disruption, but through gradual and structural refinement. The more routine aspects of legal work – research, document analysis and process management – will increasingly be absorbed by intelligent systems. This will not diminish the role of the lawyer; rather, it will reorient it towards judgement, strategy, and the exercise of professional responsibility.

The more important question, however, is not what AI can do, but how it is governed and integrated. The legal profession carries an inherent duty to uphold trust, accuracy, and accountability-principles that must remain intact as technology advances.

Within this transformation, NeoLaw.ai will continue to evolve as an internal framework that supports our lawyers in meeting these obligations. Its role is not to redefine the profession, but to ensure that we adapt to change without compromising its core values.

What makes you believe the future of LegalTech is not simply about automating existing legal processes, but about fundamentally rethinking how legal services are delivered?

The future of LegalTech cannot be confined to the automation of existing processes, because the legal profession itself is not merely procedural. At its core lies the role of the lawyer as a trusted advisor – someone who navigates complexity not only through technical knowledge, but through relationships built on trust, continuity and understanding. These relationships are not incidental; they are the foundation upon which effective legal counsel is delivered.

In parallel, lawyers often play a quiet but essential role in shaping legislative and regulatory frameworks. Through sustained engagement with institutions, policymakers and market participants, they contribute to the refinement of laws in a way that reflects practical realities. This is a function that cannot be automated – it requires judgement, dialogue and credibility developed over time.

Technology, therefore, must be understood as an enabler. By relieving lawyers of routine burdens, it allows them to invest more meaningfully in these higher-order functions: advising with clarity, fostering trust, and contributing to the evolution of the legal and regulatory environment itself.

Website: https://neo.law

LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/elias-neocleous-&-co-llc?originalSubdomain=cy

Investment platform Wealthyhood has recorded a five-fold increase in investors and an eight-fold rise in client assets in Cyprus between June and September 2026, with data from its partnership with the Bank of Cyprus pointing to growing interest in local shares, exchange-traded funds and accessible long-term investing.

The figures, published in ‘Wealthyhood’s Cyprus Investor Pulse 2026‘ report, cover anonymised and aggregated data from clients resident in Cyprus between June 1 and September 30, with the findings highlighting how lower entry costs and simpler account funding can encourage participation in financial markets.

Alexandros Christodoulakis, co-founder and chief executive of Wealthyhood, told the Cyprus Mail that the response from Cypriot investors had exceeded expectations in terms of the quality of their engagement.

“People in Cyprus didn’t need to be convinced that investing matters. What they were missing was a simple, trusted way to start, and once that existed, they moved quickly,” he said.

The report found that 88.6 per cent of clients who deposited money went on to buy a stock or exchange-traded fund (ETF), compared with 80.4 per cent among clients who signed up in Greece during the same period.

Christodoulakis said the company was encouraged by the extent to which customers were continuing to invest after opening their accounts, rather than simply registering and leaving the platform.

“Of those who joined in June or July and invested, 88.9 per cent were still invested on September 30,” he said.

“Seven in ten (70.3 per cent) have never sold an investment, and six in ten (59.1 per cent) made a second deposit within 30 days of their first,” Christodoulakis continued. “People are not trying the app once and walking away; they are building a habit.”

He added that four months of activity remained an early snapshot, but that the quality of engagement had been particularly encouraging.

Low entry barriers foster early activity and habit-building

The report also found that 58.4 per cent of new investors made their first investment within 7 days of signing up, while 14.4 per cent invested on the same day.

The typical first deposit was €100, while the typical first investment amounted to €55. Almost two-thirds of investors, or 64 per cent, started with €100 or less, suggesting that many were entering the market with relatively modest sums.

More than half, or 56.8 per cent, made their first investment in an ETF, which allows investors to buy into a collection of companies through a single product.

The most popular first investment was the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, accounting for 16.6 per cent of first investments, followed by Bank of Cyprus shares at 10.2 per cent.

Christodoulakis said traditional barriers to investing included high minimum investment requirements, fees that eroded smaller amounts, paperwork and complicated terminology.

“Faced with that, many people who could invest simply never start. Not because they don’t care about their future, but because the first step looks expensive, complicated and opaque,” he stated.

Wealthyhood aims to address these obstacles by allowing customers to invest in international and local markets from €1, with zero commission and fractional shares, alongside an education hub containing more than 50 guides.

The platform also offers Autopilot, an automated investing service through which users can make regular investments without having to manage each transaction manually. The typical Autopilot user invests €150 a month, according to the report.

Christodoulakis said access to financial markets needed to be accompanied by a better understanding of investment products and their risks.

“Access alone isn’t enough, though. People also need to understand what they’re buying and why, which is why education sits at the core of the app, not in a corner of it,” he said.

Investor demographics reveal mature and higher-earning profile

The report’s demographic findings challenge the assumption that investment applications primarily attract younger users.

The typical investor in Cyprus is 40 years old, works full-time and declares an annual income of between €30,001 and €50,000. The largest age group is 35 to 44, accounting for 31.7 per cent of investors, followed by those aged 45 to 54 at 25.9 per cent and those aged 25 to 34 at 25.3 per cent.

People under 30 account for 19.3 per cent of investors.

Income levels were also higher than those recorded among investors in Greece. Some 31 per cent of Cypriot investors declared annual incomes above €50,000, while 24 per cent reported incomes below €20,000, compared with 58 per cent of investors in Greece in the latter category.

Full-time employees account for 86.5 per cent of investors, while 4.7 per cent are self-employed.

Finance and insurance is the most common industry, employing 31.5 per cent of investors, followed by information technology at 10.5 per cent and the public sector at 8.1 per cent.

Nicosia district accounts for 50.5 per cent of investors, followed by Limassol at 25.6 per cent, Larnaca at 14.9 per cent, Paphos at 5.1 per cent and Famagusta at 3.9 per cent.

Christodoulakis said the available data was not yet sufficient to establish how the investor profile had changed over time or to draw reliable conclusions about customers’ previous investing experience.

However, he said the behaviour observed so far pointed towards a cautious, long-term approach, characterised by small initial investments, ETFs and limited selling.

“One number I’d like to see change: about one in six new investors is a woman. Closing that gap is one of the biggest challenges for retail investing, in Cyprus and beyond,” he said.

He added that the market was increasingly being shaped by working people seeking greater control over their long-term finances, rather than traders attempting to profit from short-term market movements.

“As cost and complexity keep falling, I expect that profile to broaden, especially to younger people and to women,” he said.

Domestic shares drive engagement alongside global ETFs

The availability of domestic shares has also helped attract investors to the platform, with the Bank of Cyprus emerging as its most-bought individual stock.

Cypriot and Greek shares became available through Wealthyhood on July 17, allowing customers to hold domestic investments alongside international stocks and ETFs.

Customers can access Bank of Cyprus shares and 8 other companies listed on the Cyprus Stock Exchange, namely Vassiliko Cement, Demetra Holdings, Logicom, Cyprus Cement, Petrolina, Atlantic Insurance, Pandora Investments and GlobalWealth Group.

Within less than 3 months of the launch, 29.2 per cent of buyers had purchased at least 1 Cypriot share.

The Bank of Cyprus was bought by 35.8 per cent of stock investors, ahead of US technology company NVIDIA at 21.3 per cent and SpaceX at 12.6 per cent.

Among investors who purchased Cypriot shares, 82.6 per cent chose the Bank of Cyprus, followed by Vassiliko Cement at 16 per cent, Petrolina at 12.3 per cent and Logicom at 8.2 per cent.

The report found that domestic shares were bringing new participants into the market. For 52.8 per cent of investors holding Cypriot shares, a local company had been their first investment on Wealthyhood, compared with just 1.8 per cent among other investors.

Those holding Cypriot shares also had larger portfolios, with a typical portfolio 1.8 times the size of those held by other investors and containing 3 investments rather than 1.

Christodoulakis said familiar domestic companies could provide an accessible entry point for people who were less comfortable with international markets.

“People invest more readily in companies they know, and familiar local names are often the bridge into the market,” he said.

However, he stressed that local shares were complementing rather than replacing international investments.

The report found that 8.6 per cent of money invested since July 17 had gone into Cypriot shares, while Greek shares accounted for 12.3 per cent. Some 18.9 per cent of buyers had purchased at least 1 Greek share.

Across portfolios, 37.6 per cent of invested money was allocated to the United States, 21.1 per cent to global ETFs, 16.5 per cent to the rest of Europe, 11.3 per cent to Greece and 8.9 per cent to Cyprus.

The figures also showed the importance of ETFs in investors’ portfolios. The Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, which tracks the 500 largest US companies, had been purchased by 42.7 per cent of ETF investors and was held by 24.4 per cent of all investors on September 30.

Other popular ETFs included the Vanguard LifeStrategy 80 per cent Equity fund, purchased by 13.6 per cent of ETF investors, the SPDR MSCI World at 13.1 per cent and the iShares Nasdaq 100 at 11.9 per cent.

Among investors who still held investments on September 30, 42.5 per cent held only ETFs.

Dual exchange listings and long-term literacy goals

The report also examined access to shares listed in Athens. On September 30, 25.6 per cent of investors held at least 1 stock listed on Euronext Athens, including the Bank of Cyprus, while 7.6 per cent held a stock listed on the Cyprus Stock Exchange and 4.2 per cent held shares listed on both exchanges.

Athens-listed stocks accounted for 17.1 per cent of invested money, while Cyprus Stock Exchange-listed shares represented 2.1 per cent.

After the Bank of Cyprus, the most widely held Athens-listed stocks were Eurobank, at 5.1 per cent, followed by Allwyn and Alpha Bank, each at 2.8 per cent. Half of the 10 most widely held names were banks.

Christodoulakis said the company’s priorities in Cyprus were to improve financial education, encourage customers to turn initial investments into regular habits and expand the role of automated investing.

He said Wealthyhood and the Bank of Cyprus shared a responsibility to help close the financial literacy gap, particularly among younger people and women, by improving understanding of risk, diversification and the importance of time in investing.

“Giving people access to markets is only half of the job; helping them understand risk, diversification and time is the other half,” he said.

The company also wants to build on existing customer behaviour through services such as Autopilot, which can make regular investment contributions easier to maintain.

Christodoulakis said the first months of activity had demonstrated a clear appetite for accessible investing in Cyprus, but that the next challenge was to turn the initial momentum into sustained participation.

“Four months in, Cyprus has shown us the appetite is real. Now the work is to turn that early momentum into a generation of long-term investors,” he said.

The Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) in Cyprus will hold an online information session on November 19, 2026, to present funding opportunities available to businesses and organisations under the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) 2027 work programme.

The event, announced by the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Keve), which coordinates EEN activities in Cyprus, will explain the main funding instruments available under the programme and outline the most important changes and new developments planned for 2027.

The session is aimed at businesses and organisations seeking European funding to support innovation, develop new technologies and scale up their operations.

Participants will receive information on the EIC Pathfinder, EIC Transition and EIC Accelerator programmes, as well as the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) Scale Up initiative.

These instruments support different stages of innovation, from early-stage research and the development of technologies towards commercialisation to the growth of businesses seeking to expand their operations.

The event will also feature EEN2EIC, which will present its activities, services and tools designed to help innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and start-ups access EIC funding opportunities.

The special session will also explain how EEN2EIC supports businesses in improving their investment readiness, helping them prepare to attract funding and pursue opportunities under the European innovation funding framework.

Interested businesses and organisations can register through the event’s registration link provided by the organisers.