Russia now Cyprus’ second largest tourist market

Total arrivals tumble in August

Arrivals figures for August have extinguished any doubt that this has been a bad year for tourism in Cyprus, while also underlining the growing importance of Russian tourists, now the second biggest market.

According to the results of the Passengers Survey, arrivals of tourists fell by 6.5% year on year to reached 314,872 in August 2006 compared to 336,587 in August 2005.

For the period January-August 2006 arrivals of tourists fell by 2.4% to reach 1,654,641, compared with 1,694,477 in the corresponding period of 2005.

The main cause of the decline was a 5.3% year-on-year drop in arrivals from the UK, to 188,993 in August 2006 compared with 199,578 in August 2005.

Arrivals from the UK account for more than half of all Cyprus’ tourists. Arrivals are also down from the other large markets: Germany (down 21.4% year on year in Jan-August), Greece (down 8.5%) and Sweden (up 4.5% in Jan-Aug but down 12.6% in August).

The only major markets to record an increase were Russia (up 21.9% year on year in January-August), Ireland (up 3.4%) and the United Arab Emirates (up 19.8%).

Russia is now the second largest market for tourists, according to data for the first eight months of the year.

The data suggest that the 50,000 or so evacuees from Lebanon did not find their way into the tourism figures: tourist arrivals from Lebanon were down 81.5% year on year in August.

Fiona Mullen