Tourism arrivals dive 7% in Jan

Tourism arrivals in January 2006 fell 6.8% year on year to 54.875 compared to 58.894 in January 2005, the Statistics Department reported.

Arrivals from the EU reached 49.347 of whom 29.469 or 50% of total tourism arrivals came from the UK. The decline in overall arrivals is largely blamed on a decline in arrivals from the UK, which throughout 2005 accounted for 56% share of arrivals.

Greece was the second largest supplying tourism market with 6.131 arrivals, followed by Germany with 4.249. Arrivals from Russia were 1.930, while arrivals from north America reached 1078 of whom 831 came from the US and 227 from Canada.

Arrivals from Israel were 1.365 while the Gulf countries supplied 933 in arrival figures.

In 2005, Cyprus received a total of 2.470.063 tourists for a year-on-year increase of 5.2% compared to 2.349.012 arrivals in 2004, while foreign exchange receipts in 2005 were up 2.4% y/y at CYP 1.01 bln.