Cyprus tourism gets off to a bad start in 2009

The Cyprus tourism sector started the year on the doldrums, as passenger arrivals fell by 7.1% to 47,066 in January 2009 compared with 50,658 in January 2008.
Arrivals from the UK fell by 8.5%, to 19,809 in January 2009 compared with 21,641 in January 2008.
Arrivals from Greece fell by 4.1% to 6,888 from 7,183 and arrivals from Germany dropped by 5.6% to 4,442 from 4,704 last year.
On the other hand, an increase of 42.9% was recorded in tourist arrivals from Russia (from 1,955 in January 2008 to 2,793 in January 2009).
In 2008 tourism arrivals fell by 0.5% while revenue fell by 3.5%.