Easter boost for March tourism: up 22.4%

The tourism sector in Cyprus enjoyed an Easter bunny bounce in March, as arrivals of tourists leapt by 22.4% compared with March 2004, and reached 137,075. For the first quarter as a whole, arrivals rose by 10% compared with the corresponding period of 2004.

The date of the Western Church’s Easter explains a large part of the increase. Easter for Catholics and Protestants fell on March 27 in 2005 but on April 11 (the same as the Orthodox Church) in 2004.

This means that more west Europeans took holidays in March this year than in 2004. However, the sheer size of the bounce could mean that a genuine recovery is under way.

German arrivals strong

For example, the figures also show that arrivals from the UK continued to rise faster than average: these rose by 32% year on year to 73,242. The UK accounts for well over half of all annual arrivals.

Arrivals from Germany, the second-largest market, grew even faster: increasing by 44% year on year in March to 20,140.

The biggest rise of all, however, came from the Gulf, so perhaps had nothing to do with Easter, unless all of them were expats.

Arrivals from the Gulf rose by 66.4% year on year, but still remained comparatively small as a proportion of the total, at 2,157 arrivals.

tourism arrivals scraped a 2% increase in 2004, after a cumulative fall of more than 15% in 2002-03.

The World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) forecast on April 8 that the travel and tourism sector in Cyprus will grow by 3.5% in 2005.

Fiona Mullen